Educators’ implicit and explicit reactions to African-American-English–speaking students’ language sends an important message to these students about safety and acceptance, and positive messages help students view learning as an accessible and engaging process. Language differences can add to other school stressors.

Language varieties hold inherent value as markers of culture and identity. As a result, some speakers of African American English, including students, may feel shame, insecurity, and embarrassment when they operate within a society that expects them to speak standardized English. Educators who teach African-American-English–speaking students have a special role to play in understanding these students’ personal and cultural experiences and in helping them navigate comfortably between African American English and standardized English.

Due to the history of racism and discrimination in the United States, the language patterns of African Americans often have been denigrated. African American English has been viewed as haphazard, substandard, undesirable, deviant, illogical, lazy, and broken. Yet there is no truth in such opinions about African American English or any other variety of English.

the melody and rhythm of a speaker's voice may mark a speaker as African American even if all other aspects of the speaker's language sound standardized. Rhythmic patterns are often preserved in speakers who do not use many of the more socially stigmatized lexical, phonological, and grammatical features of AAE.

The AAE lexicon is perhaps the feature that is best known to the general American public. The lexicon is emphasized and frequently represented in popular culture. There are also other often-unnoticed lexical differences that may have an effect on a child's understanding and success in the classroom

not all African Americans speak AAVE as a native language form, and not all speakers of AAVE are African Americans. Even among native speakers of AAVE, most African-American writers use SE in their formal writing (e.g., for publication or for business audiences), whether or not they do so in their informal writing (e.g., when texting, tweeting, e-mailing, or corresponding with family or friends). The tradition of African-American writers using SE goes back to the earliest days of African-American written literature.

Ever since, African Americans have been taught to use SE in their writing, and many schools have tried to implement policies of encouraging students to speak SE during school hours. The use of AAVE versus SE in the classroom has been highly controversial, as in the 1996 decision of the Oakland, California, School Board resolution

Unlike Gullah and other creoles, AAVE has been closely tied to SE; native speakers of AAVE and of SE have generally been able to understand one another. As soon as Southern slavery ended (1863-1865, depending on the location), African Americans were not only allowed to learn to read and write, but also actively encouraged to do so through Freedmen's Schools and other institutions.

This is in line with systems practice, which defines purpose in terms of longer term and more abstract aspirational states—“guiding stars”—and shorter term, more concrete desired outcomes—“near stars” (https://docs.kumu.io/content/Workbook-012617.pdf). We have come across two main sub-categories of purpose elements: ‘Themes’ and ‘Topics’ (guiding stars) and ‘Goals’ and ‘Plans’ (near stars).