ELL News Headlines

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) just tapped Linda Darling-Hammond, a giant in the world of education, to head the 11-member state Board of Education. During his first State of the State address Tuesday, Newsom announced that Darling-Hammond would work alongside the newly elected state superintendent, Tony Thurmond, to help "confront" problems plaguing California's public schools.

Debbie Reese reviews the new book "Fighter in Velvet Gloves: Alaska Civil Rights Hero Elizabeth Peratrovich", whose testimony led to the passing of the Alaska Anti-Discrimination Act, America’s first civil rights legislation. Today, Alaska celebrates Elizabeth Peratrovich Day every February 16, and she will be honored on the gold one-dollar coin in 2020.

Students in England already learn about mathematics, science and history, but hundreds of schools are preparing to expand the traditional curriculum with a new subject: mindfulness. In up to 370 English schools, students will start to practice mindfulness as part of a study to improve youth mental health, the British government said on Monday. They will work with mental health experts to learn relaxation techniques, breathing exercises and other methods to “help them regulate their emotions,” the government said in a news release announcing the program.

Baltimore County's school system is absorbing a wave of immigrants that has fueled rising enrollments the past few years, adding thousands of students who teachers say are enriching their schools but also stretching the system to find additional seats and new ways to teach them. While the largest number of foreign-born students are from Central America, the newcomers are from around the world. The second-most commonly spoken foreign language in Baltimore County schools after Spanish is Yoruba, a language of Nigeria. Across the system, students come from 116 countries and speak 97 different languages.

Because of significant labor shortages, Pennsylvania's dairy farms rely on Spanish-speaking immigrants as a key source of labor. However, cultural differences and language barriers can leave employers and workers lost in translation, affecting workers' well-being and community connection, and ultimately, farm viability. A new, innovative community service-learning course — "Service-Learning with Pennsylvania Farmworkers" — offered by Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences is aimed at breaking down those barriers.

New resources will be available for nurseries, schools and colleges to benefit 6,500 deaf children using English as an additional language. A new booklet and video are being launched with practical advice and strategies for teachers and education professionals to help children overcome these challenges and learn at the same pace as their hearing classmates. These resources are free of charge and the National Deaf Children's Society is urging all schools who work with these deaf children to use them.

Jeff Buck was the very first teacher to sign up for Denver's revolutionary pay-for-performance system in 2005. More than 13 years later, he is one of a dozen teachers sitting in a conference room at an obscure school district building, trying to unravel what the system has become.

Samuel Getachew is an Ethiopian-American high school student and poet, and a delegate to the International Congress of Youth Voices. In this commentary about the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrest of rapper 21 Savage, who is a British citizen, he writes, "In the legal saga surrounding 21 Savage, I found unexpected validation. Here is a public figure who is very much black, and also an immigrant — an image that we don’t see enough and that I could have used when I was younger and grappling with my identity. It’s clear to me that 21 Savage is an immigrant and a black man, and neither invalidates the other."

A handful of pre-K locations in the Jackson Heights, Corona and Elmhurst neighborhoods will begin to offer instruction in Spanish as part of an expanded dual language programs initiative announced by the city earlier this week.

Children with Down syndrome can and do become bilingual. Initial findings of a research study at Bangor University suggest that speaking two languages is not in any way detrimental to the language development of children with Down syndrome.