ELL News Headlines

Danilo Moreta, a Cornell University graduate student studying corn breeding, stood wearing jeans and a black button-down shirt as undergraduate students entered Room 336 in the Plant Science Building for a Tuesday night section of "PLSCI 4300, Applications in Molecular Diagnostics." Moreta teaches the science section in Spanish. Partly, that's because students in January will do fieldwork in Chilean vineyards, gathering leaf samples to test for viruses. But the Spanish section also reflects a move at Cornell and more than two dozen other campuses to combat the notion that language-learning belongs only in language classes.

On the first day of sixth grade, at his new school in a new neighborhood, Angel Angon Quiroz, 11, sat by himself in the corner of the cafeteria, wondering if he had made a mistake. Students at Angel's old elementary school overwhelmingly come from poor and Hispanic families. Now, a new integration plan in Brooklyn had placed him at a middle school called the Math & Science Exploratory School. It was popular with affluent families, but would he fit in? Sophie Rivas, who comes from one of those affluent white families, badly wanted to attend Math & Science or one of her other top choices. Like Angel, she ranked Math & Science first on her school lottery application, but because Angel's family is low-income, he had priority. Sophie did not. Instead, Sophie traveled to Sunset Park, where Angel lives, to a school she had not heard of until she found out she was placed there. She arrived to find she was one of the only non-Hispanic children in her class.

There are few media literacy projects designed with immigrant students in mind. Combine that with the growing research that much "fake news" is about new immigrants, generating consternation in those communities, and you begin to appreciate the complexity of the problem.

Staff, students and local officials gathered on Tuesday to celebrate the culmination of more than a year of struggle, and to remember a friend and colleague, with a ribbon-cutting for the Open Doors English: Julie Rudd Coulombe Language Program.

Some incoming kindergartners will be learning in two languages starting next fall, as the Olathe School District launches a dual-language Spanish immersion program in two elementary schools.

Lake Tahoe Community College prides itself on being a beacon in the community, especially for latinx and other minority students, through the Equity Program. The Equity Program helps students who are minorities, homeless, low-income, a former or current foster youth or first generation college students navigate college life and thrive.

Last month's release of Hawaii student performance results on the 2019 "Nation's Report Card" showed little change from the previous assessment in 2017, except in one area: reading and math scores among Hawaii’s fourth grade English language learners. English learners at that grade level posted double digit gains in both subjects, a spike that was so dramatic, even Hawaii's own testing officials took pause.

Diversity, understanding bias, and the power of human kindness were main themes in all three conference keynote speeches at the Association of American School Librarians (AASL) National conference. Ellen Oh, author and co-founder of We Need Diverse Books, educator Adolph Brown, and graphic novelist Jarrett J. Krosoczka also spoke of the profound influence libraries had on their childhoods and lives.

Records obtained by the Houston Chronicle show that thousands of elementary and middle school children in HISD rarely take home books from their campus library, limiting opportunities to hone literacy skills and a love for reading at a critical time in their development. In at least seven HISD schools, all of which serve predominantly low-income students, a majority of children did not check out a single book in 2018-19, the records show. The paltry checkout rates are indicative of HISD’s relatively low investment in library services, which has drawn criticism for more than a decade from librarians, literacy advocates and some district leaders.

The U.S. Supreme Court's conservative majority signaled Tuesday that it may let the Trump administration shut down the Obama-era program that granted temporary protection from deportation to roughly 700,000 young people, commonly known as DREAMers.