ELL News Headlines

The new question-of-the-week is: "What are the best ways to respond when teachers are told we should keep politics out of the classroom?" Today, Jen Schwanke, Dr. Carolyn M. Shields, Timothy Hilton, and Bill Ivey contribute their commentaries.

As schools continue to figure out what instuction looks like this year, the 134,000 public-school English learners here in Washington face logistical challenges. Reports suggest that English learners across the U.S. have struggled to connect with their remote classrooms, too.  But this pattern isn’t necessarily fixed in stone. And as the country’s nearly 5 million English learners continue treading in yet another disrupted semester, the factors that helped those school systems and others around the country avoid failing them could teach Washington's school leaders valuable lessons.

Rocklin, a 12,000-student district located east of Sacramento, recently moved to a hybrid plan with staggered days of in-person schooling, per California’s tiered health department guidelines for schools. It is one of what is expected to be thousands of U.S. school districts that are moving a step closer to full in-person instruction this month, as school leaders reassess their responses to the coronavirus pandemic.

The share of children with health coverage in the United States fell for the third consecutive year in 2019, according to census data, after decades of increases. The decline occurred during a period of economic growth — before the coronavirus pandemic caused broad job losses that might have cost many more Americans their health insurance.

About one-fifth of students in California are learning English as a second language, and most of their classes are only in English. In order to learn to speak, read and write fluently, they need additional language classes and many opportunities to practice speaking and interacting with peers and teachers, which can be difficult remotely. Researchers and advocates for English learners say during distance learning, schools need to prioritize live instruction and small groups. They also need to work with families in their native languages to support learning at home and provide social-emotional support to ease anxiety and stress caused by the pandemic.

Note: This post shares the story of a teacher who recently lost her life to COVID-19.

After holding her hands as she took her final breaths, Olga Quiroga's family drove past a double rainbow last Thursday and felt her presence. A Chicago Public Schools teacher for two decades, Quiroga's career as a bilingual educator traces back to her childhood 1,400 miles away in Nuevo Laredo, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. Playing pretend with her siblings, Quiroga assumed the role of a teacher who could speak both English and Spanish.

Naibe Reynoso, multi-Emmy award winning journalist, has released her newest children's book "How to Fold a Taco." The book is bilingual, written in both English and Spanish, and promotes active imagination in children. Reynoso's first three books are more educational and focus on Latinx leaders who made history in the United States.

A study conducted at 19 universities found that a brief social belonging exercise boosts the performance and persistence of students who speak English as a second language in STEM disciplines: science, technology, engineering and math.

The closure of school buildings in response to the coronavirus has been disruptive and inconvenient for many families, but for those living in homeless shelters or hotel rooms — including roughly 1.5 million school-aged children — the shuttering of classrooms and cafeterias has been disastrous.