ELL News Headlines

Under a canopy on the edge of a squalid encampment, a young physician named Dairon Elisondo Rojas holds office hours every day from 10 to 4.

Nelba Marquez-Greene's 6-year-old daughter Ana was killed in the Sandy Hook shootings. In this letter to teachers, written a year after the attack, she writes, "As another school year begins and old routines settle back into place, I wanted to share my story in honor of the teachers everywhere who care for our children."

The Milken Educator Awards, hailed by Teacher magazine as the "Oscars of Teaching" has been opening minds and shaping futures for over 30 years. ELL Teacher Julie Rowell was named a 2019-20 recipient of the national recognition, which comes with an unrestricted $25,000 cash prize. Rowell's ELL classes engage students who typically have only two to three years of English, propelling them via group learning projects and individualized strategies that have them swiftly engaged in conversations. Her students regularly advance more than a year per grade, and Rowell helps put them on a pathway to higher education by deploying the student-centric AVID system (Advancement Via Individual Determination).

Cicely Lewis, a Georgia high school librarian who challenges students to "Read Woke," has been awarded the 2019 National Teacher Award for Lifelong Readers. Lewis created the Read Woke challenge in 2017 in response to growing concern among students about the shootings of unarmed Black boys, the repeal of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and the lack of diversity in young adult literature.

For nearly five years, teachers and staff at Lake Elmo Elementary have been working with the Hispanic families that attend the elementary school to create lasting partnerships. Brandon Auge, a English Language teacher at Lake Elmo Elementary, said opportunities for staff to meet with parents are very important. "It provides an opportunity for us to learn how we can be more responsive to the families that we're serving," Auge said. "If we learn more about the lived experience of our families, the better we can all be. It’s about is getting to know and understand the successes and the challenges that all of our families are having, and providing a really intentional opportunity to learn about that, so we can respond to it."

More than 12 percent of students in Clover Park School District are English Language Learners (ELL). Traditionally, ELL students in Clover Park were pulled out of their regular class for up to 45 minutes at a time to work directly with ELL teachers. It was a balancing act that meant less time with peers in favor of more time learning language skills. However, in recent years, the district focused on keeping students in the classroom as much as possible.

Amid a wide-ranging campaign to discourage migration to the United States, President Donald Trump has vowed repeatedly to end the practice he calls "catch and release," under which migrants are allowed to live freely in the United States while their lengthy immigration cases are in process. The administration wants to expand the system of secure facilities where migrant families can be incarcerated for months or longer. In late November, Justice Department lawyers appealed a federal judge's decision that blocked the government’s attempt to eliminate a 20-day time limit on most family detentions.

A Gwinnett academic director is hoping to empower children through her own personal immigration journey.  Nury Castillo Crawford was 10 years old when she came to the United States from Peru with her parents and her siblings. 

Southwestern Oregon Community College's Fall 2019 English as a Second Language class has partnered with the Charleston Marine Life Center to produce four foreign language translations of the CMLC Visitors Guide. After touring the center with Director Trish Mace, the students were inspired to apply their English skills to translating the original brochures into their first languages of Spanish, Russian, Japanese and Mandarin Chinese.

Caroll Spinney, the puppeteer who gave life to Big Bird, the towering yellow avian of TV's "Sesame Street" who accompanied generations of youngsters in the arduous, yet wondrous, work of growing up, died Dec. 8 at his home in Connecticut. He was 85 and died hours before "Sesame Street" received Kennedy Center Honors for achievement in the arts.