ELL News Headlines

Jaquan Greene buckled the scuba vest, adjusted his goggles and stuck the regulator — the device that delivered air from the gas tank strapped to his back — into his mouth. The 16-year-old swam through the shallow end of Dunbar High School’s indoor pool — like a fish, a couple of teachers said. Jaquan's lesson came through Diving With a Purpose, an organization that catalogues artifacts from the sites of slave shipwrecks and has sent hundreds of divers into the ocean to document the centuries-old wreckage. On a recent Friday, Walker and filmmaker Shirikiana Gerima were at the majority-black school in Northwest Washington with a message for its students: "We need you."

It all started with a big, controversial bet that young kids could actually learn from television. In its inaugural seasons, episodes dedicated to the letter n or the number 5 reflected the zeal of its educational mission and its laser-like focus on pedagogy. But from the moment it was first conceived in a 1967 report presented by its founder, Joan Ganz Cooney, Sesame Street quietly harbored larger ambitions.

A Hartford Spanish teacher has created a lesson plan right from her own backyard. She’s bringing Hartford's rich Puerto Rican history into the classroom and beyond.

"Sesame Street" can feel deeply personal to just about anyone under the age of 55. It taught us to read and count, but it also taught us about kindness and acceptance. It was jazzy and groovy; it had a loose and wild feeling, even with all that PhD scrutiny on every frame. Today the show is brighter, faster and somehow zippier, set on a cleaner, spiffier Sesame Street (shot on a set in Astoria, Queens) with a community garden and a recycling bin next to Oscar the Grouch's trash can. Hooper's Store serves birdseed smoothies and has bistro seating. Yet the sense of belonging remains. "Sesame Street" was inclusive before anyone really knew what that meant, the first safe space. It is a friend to everyone, which has a lot to do with why it’s the first TV show to receive Kennedy Center Honors.

On the Navajo Nation, rez ball (basketball) has all of the intensity of an NBA game – including die-hard fans. Learn more from this show about rez ball on public radio's 1A.

This collection of transitional chapter books includes a diverse selection of titles for early grades.

David M. Quinn is an assistant professor of education at the University of Southern California's Rossier School of Education, where Tara-Marie Desruisseaux and Akua Nkansah-Amankra are doctoral students. In this commentary, they write, "In the 21st century, calls to 'close the achievement gap' have been ubiquitous in education circles. Yet, as policymakers and educators devote more attention to the problem, a growing number of commentators have begun to worry that the dominance of this 'gap' framing of conversations about race and education may be counterproductive."

Dorothy Fredrick first heard of Head Start in the 1990s from a teacher whose children she was babysitting. At the time, Fredrick lived in Ellicott, Colo., a rural community about an hour outside Colorado Springs. Until then, she had never heard of the federal program. Twenty-three years later, she is now the curriculum, instruction and training coordinator for the Community Partnership for Childhood Development, the agency administering Head Start programs in the Colorado Springs region. She oversees curriculum development, professional development and new staff training for 69 classrooms.  Fredrick’s journey isn't all that unusual. It's in keeping with Head Start’s larger mission to serve two generations, empowering parents to pursue education and careers, often within Head Start facilities.

A 16-year-old girl was abducted, raped, beaten and held captive for months in Congo. She became pregnant and gave birth. In an effort to avoid the stigma and shame that this would bring upon her family and because she would not be eligible for any other marriage, her parents joined the perpetrators' family in trying to force her to marry her abductor. Although she was expected to obey, she refused. The perpetrator's family took her baby. Remarkably, she managed to escape and make her way to a center where she could access services for girls like her. There she created a story cloth.

Jacob Castaneda is executive director of programs in Los Angeles for Bridge to Enter Advanced Mathematics (BEAM), a nonprofit dedicated to creating pathways for underserved students to become scientists, mathematicians, engineers and computer scientists. In this editorial, he writes, "Far too often, talented math students at schools in low-income communities barely have access to grade-level work, let alone advanced curricula… Rather than letting these high-aptitude students founder, we must find ways to nurture their talent. Students from higher-income high schools graduate from college with majors in science, technology, engineering and math at twice the rate (16 percent) of those from low-income high schools (8 percent)."