ELL News Headlines

With the ongoing pandemic, Hispanic Heritage celebrations are looking a bit different this year. Iowa's Latino Heritage Festival is a state wide event that celebrates the month and dates back to 2002. Organizers say it's a great way to celebrate the rich traditions and culture.

With several schools starting the year on remote or hybrid learning plans, several Latino families say they are hitting a wall when it comes to teaching their children.  One north Toledo mother says that the situation presents so many difficulties that she would rather have her kids go back to in-school learning than to see them fall behind. 

In late June and early July, the Denver school district asked families to make a choice: Would they want their children to stay home this fall and learn online, or would they want to send their children in person to school buildings, with safety protocols to protect against the coronavirus? The district got answers for about half of its 92,000 students. For 75% of students whose families responded, the preference was the in-person option, which has since been delayed by at least several weeks. But survey results obtained by Chalkbeat through an open records request reveal differences by race. While 88% of white students chose the in-person option, only 65% of African American students and 67% of Hispanic students did — a trend also seen nationally. A similar percentage of Asian students, 69%, chose the in-person option.

When Wilbur Cross teacher Kristin Mendoza had the floor, she didn't waste the chance to advocate for undocumented students facing extra disadvantages during the Covid-19 pandemic. Mendoza was selected by group of peers to be New Haven Public Schools’ Teacher Of The Year. Superintendent Iline Tracey invited her to give a brief acceptance speech at Monday’s Board of Education meeting.

A Spanish teacher at Wood River Middle School in Hailey has been tabbed as Idaho's 2021 Teacher of the Year. Superintendent of Public Instruction Sherri Ybarra surprised Jorge Pulleiro with the award Tuesday morning.

The overall attendance rate for first graders in Los Angeles Unified is down 3.7% compared to a year ago — and down by two or three times that rate for some of the highest-needs students — according to the latest data from the district. Cumulative attendance rates since the start of the school year show a 7.5% drop in attendance among Black students and a 4.1% decrease among Latino students in the first grade. The rates also went down by 4.2% for English learners, 4% for students with disabilities, 9.6% for foster youths and 13.5% for homeless students.

Birmingham has a vibrant (and growing) Latinx community. In these interviews, four Birminghamians talk about what their Hispanic Heritage means to them.

Authors Nicola Yoon (The Sun is Also a Star) and David Yoon (Frankly in Love) are launching Joy Revolution, a romance imprint that will be written by people of color and feature the stories of people of color. The first titles will be released in 2022.

In many parts of the developing world, school closures put children on the streets. Families are desperate for money. Children are an easy source of cheap labor. While the United States and other developed countries debate the effectiveness of online schooling, hundreds of millions of children in poorer countries lack computers or the internet and have no schooling at all. United Nations officials estimate that at least 24 million children will drop out and that millions could be sucked into work. Ten-year-olds are now mining sand in Kenya.