ELL News Headlines

The landmark Yazzie/Martinez v. State of New Mexico lawsuit ordered the state to direct more resources to public schools. Part of that mandate calls for culturally relevant curriculum and more support for students learning English as a second language. Teachers and administrators at El Camino Real Academy in Santa Fe say the school's dual-language curriculum accomplishes both.

Meghanlata Gupta, an undergraduate at Yale University, is the founder of Indigenizing the News, a newsletter focused on Native issues. She writes, "My mother’s side of the family never immigrated to North America — they’ve always been here. While many people can trace their family history back to a great-great-great-great grandfather who traveled across the Atlantic Ocean in search of the famed “American Dream,” my ancestors inhabited the lands and waters in the Great Lakes region since the beginning of time itself. We are Anishinaabe peoples, also known as Ojibwe or Chippewa. My tribal nation, commonly known as the Soo Tribe, holds a sovereign-to-sovereign relationship with the United States government."

In this column, award-winning ESOL teacher Justin Minkel writes, "The first thing I notice when I walk into an elementary school classroom is how much student work is posted on the walls. Are there plenty of imaginative stories, detailed drawings, and vibrant paintings made by the hands of children? Or is the majority of wall space dedicated to anchor charts and inspirational posters made by adults?"

Rhode Island's smallest city has experienced such an influx of new students that the district is asking for $1 million in emergency funds to keep the schools afloat. Four hundred new students, many of them from Guatemala, have arrived here since last spring, when the Rhode Island Department of Education established the district's fiscal 2020 school budget. In fact, a new student arrives in Central Falls approximately every other day, according to Interim Supt. Stephanie Downey Toledo.

It can be hard to stay relevant in the ever-changing world of children's entertainment, but Highlights For Children magazine has lasted for generations by sticking to the formula of mixing fun with learning.

Researchers rely on district-level English-learner data to craft reports and propose policy on the state and national level. The problem is that states may not always report the data the same way—and sometimes it goes missing.

José Andrés is back at it. The celebrity chef and philanthropist is serving free meals through his nonprofit World Central Kitchen to victims affected by two massive earthquakes that hit Puerto Rico earlier this week.

The students in Sharon George's class are all refugees. Mariam came to the United States from Sudan. Her classmates are from Somalia, Syria, Burundi and Nepal. They have chosen this school, Fugees Academy, for its explicit focus on serving young refugee students and helping them through high school and into college.

Puerto Rico's schools were closed Wednesday as the U.S. territory continued to take stock of damage caused by a series of earthquakes, including one that registered 6.4 in magnitude on the Richter scale early Tuesday. 

In the courtyard of David Starr Jordan Senior High School, a Title 1 school in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, teens arranged some 600 new books on folding tables, library book carts, and wooden bookshelves inside a parked bookmobile. The teenagers were volunteering with the Book Truck, a peer-to-peer literacy nonprofit. The traveling bookmobile gives away high-demand YA titles to teens who are in foster care, experiencing homelessness, or come from low-income families. The volunteers wore name tags and were ready to help classmates choose two free books.