ELL News Headlines

Latino graduates from across the country were honored on Friday in a virtual celebration put on by Excelencia in Education, a national organization that works with institutions of higher education to improve Latino college enrollment and completion. “Forty percent of Latinos that go to college are the first in their families to go,” Excelencia co-founder and CEO Deborah Santiago said. “This is an important milestone. We thought as a national organization, what can we do? Even in these turbulent times, we cannot forget we’re feeding hope as well.” The hour-long celebration, which was live on Facebook, featured appearances by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation President Allan Goldston and Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas. Journalist Maria Hinojosa, host of NPR's "Latino USA," delivered a keynote speech to the graduates.

Teachers and parents have always faced a tough balancing act when it comes to the children in our care. How much of our job is to shield them from the ugly parts of the world, and how much is to help them learn, process, and prepare for that ugliness?

This COVID-19 comic is based on interviews conducted by NPR's Cory Turner with Tara Powell at the University of Illinois School of Social Work, Joy Osofsky at the LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, Krystal Lewis at the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown's School of Public Health and Rosemarie Truglio, senior vice president of curriculum and content at Sesame Workshop.

Wondering how to keep your kids healthy, happy and learning during the quarantine? Longtime bilingual children's music maker José-Luis Orozco has you covered.

Latino high school students in Wellington, Fla. are taking the initiative to address educational challenges posted by the COVID-19 pandemic by providing a helping hand to elementary students struggling to read in English. It is part of a partnership between Wellington High School and Latinos in Action, a nonprofit program that encourages young Latinos to make a change in their communities.

Danielle Colayco starts every day talking to her 5-year-old daughter, Audrey, in Tagalog. She greets her good morning, asks her some simple questions and tells her that she loves her. The second-generation Filipina American grew up in Southern California, not knowing a word of her family’s language. But during quarantine, she started taking weekly online Tagalog classes through the program Tagalog With Kirby, while her daughter participates virtually through TagalogKids.com.

Lynette Stant teaches third grade in the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian community in Arizona. For our Learning Curve series, she shares what a week of virtual learning is like.

The magnitude of the crisis facing President Biden at the U.S.-Mexico border came into clearer focus Wednesday as the new administration was holding record numbers of unaccompanied migrant teens and children in detention cells for far longer than legally allowed and federal health officials fell further behind in their race to find space for them in shelters.

So-called "learning pods" cropped up across the country in primarily white, wealthy neighborhoods last year as the pandemic first brought schools to a close. In more recent months, several organizations in low-income Black and Latino neighborhoods in Boston have pulled together to offer similar options to their local students. Amanda Fernández, co-founder of Latinos for Education, and Vanessa Calderón-Rosado, executive director of Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción, joined Jim Braude to talk about one such effort in Boston.