ELL News Headlines

A coalition of states and advocacy organizations sued the Trump administration on Wednesday over its rollback of school nutritional standards championed by the former first lady Michelle Obama that required students be served healthier meals.

From Sonia De Los Santos's ¡Alegría!, which explores joy and happiness, to Ginalina's It Takes a Village to Legion of Peace: Songs Inspired by Nobel Laureates by Lori Henriques Quintet featuring Joey Alexander, many of this season’s children’s music selections are filled with thoughtful positivity. But there’s still plenty of room for goofiness and whimsy, as Tom Mason and the Blue Baccaneers' If You Want To Be a Pirate and The Story Pirates' Nothing Is Impossible demonstrate.

The new question-of-the-week is: "What are effective ways to use tech in science classes?" Ed-tech can have an important role in science classes, but, with all the possible options out there, what tools should be used and how should educators use them?

In Acacia WoodsChan's ethnic studies class at Castlemont High School in Oakland, California, students chat with each other in Spanish, Arabic and Mam, a Mayan language from Guatemala. The students have only been in the U.S. for a few weeks or months. Some are from Yemen and many are from countries in Central America — Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

The number of Central American children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally has risen sharply over the last three years, and those numbers are impacting the D.C. area. In 2016, nearly 80,000 unaccompanied minors from Central America were released to communities throughout the nation; roughly 4,000 of them settled in the Washington region. Advocates say the increase is being driven by migrants’ fears of gang violence in their home countries — fears that outweigh heightened concerns about deportation under the Trump administration. And this is what the organizers of a local play "Óyeme, the beautiful" hope to address.

"At Denver Public Library [DPL], trauma walks through our doors every day," says Elissa Hardy, licensed clinical social worker and DPL community resource manager. As a result, throughout the library system, social workers and peer navigators train staff on how to view potentially difficult patron encounters through a trauma-informed lens. "What might appear to be a behavior ‘problem’ may actually be how an individual—including children—has learned to cope in their world," Hardy says.

On a muggy fall morning, pre-K teacher Ruth Shows inspected the work of students in her classroom, stepping over a cluster of little learners sprawled on the carpet. She watched a 4-year-old thrust her tiny hands into a plastic tub of rainbow-colored rice, scooping up handfuls of magnetic letters and numbers. Another began sorting the bounty, putting numbers into one tray and letters in another. What started as a treasure hunt had become a logic game in this state-funded pre-K classroom, a free early learning experience that’s only recently become available to a small number of students in Mississippi.

Middle school students in a handful of cities are getting a powerful and rare boost: a team of adult advisers who help them win acceptance to college-preparatory high school programs, an accomplishment that can pave their pathways to college.

In 1980, when Patricia Cantu started kindergarten in Houston, there wasn't much bilingual education at her school. "I walked in and it was only English —  that’s all it was," Cantu said. "I remember specifically singing the ABC’s and not having a clue what they were talking about. I remember just feeling lost and how helpless that feeling was as a four or five-year-old." Today, that makes Cantu uniquely qualified for her job. She leads the second language department in Alief ISD, southwest of Houston.

While no one book list can adequately explore all the variations in culture and traditions embodied within the broad category of the "Asian/Pacific American Experience," readers who identify as Asian American and/or Pacific American—especially as first-generation Americans—will find reflections of their own stories in these novels. Others will glean insight into lives that may seem unfamiliar at first glance.