Students' Right to Their Own Language - National Council of Teachers of English
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Students’ Right to Their Own Language

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"We need to ask ourselves whether the rejection of students who do not adopt the dialect most familiar to us is based on any real merit in our dialect or whether we are actually rejecting the students themselves, rejecting them because of their racial, social, and cultural origins." - Students' Right to Their Own Language, Conference on College Composition and Communication

In 1974 the Conference on College Composition and Communication first adopted a statement affirming students’ right to “their own patterns and varieties of language—the dialects of their nurture or whatever dialects in which they find their own identity and style.”

Since that time this statement has gone through revisions, and related statements have been developed. If students’ right to their own language is challenged where you teach, consider sharing these resources with your colleagues and system leaders.