ELL News Headlines

Employers in the United States are increasingly reliant on multilingual employees to advance their goals, but many have lost business opportunities because they don't have staff who can communicate in languages other than English, a new report from the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages found.

A 16-year-old boy apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol was "found unresponsive" Monday morning in the facility where he was being held, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. A Border Patrol official said Monday afternoon that the boy, Carlos Hernandez Vásquez, died hours after a nurse at a Border Patrol station in Weslaco, Texas, determined he had the Influenza A virus.

Four years ago, more than 90 percent of students at John Ruhrah Elementary/Middle School were identified as poor. This staggering poverty rate meant the federal government provided the Southeast Baltimore school with free fresh fruits and vegetables for schoolkids. New teachers could qualify for special loan forgiveness, and a bevy of grants were accessible. Perhaps most important, Ruhrah qualified for Title I, a federal program that directs resources to poor schools. Next year, Ruhrah will lose its Title I status and the nearly $250,000 attached to it. The district’s method of determining poverty — which officials acknowledge undercounts children from immigrant families — considers only 32 percent of the school’s students poor.

Pregnancy, infancy, and toddlerhood are sensitive times in which families are particularly vulnerable to household food insecurity and when disparities in child obesity emerge. Understanding obesity-promoting infant-feeding beliefs, styles, and practices in the context of food insecurity could better inform both food insecurity and child obesity prevention interventions and policy guidelines.

Naomi Shihab Nye has become the first Arab American author to be named the Young People's Poet Laureate. Nye, a Palestinian American writer and longtime fixture of the San Antonio literary scene, is the seventh poet to be named to the post by the Poetry Foundation.

An Amarillo College student received statewide recognition on May 6 for her persistence in English as a Second Language classes. Khanhthong Sidara enrolled in ESL classes at AC hoping to just improve her language skills a bit. Sidara quickly succeeded in the program and her hard work paid off.

It's the first week of Ramadan, a time when observant Muslims fast from dawn to sunset.  In the Washington region, that can be as late as 8:30 p.m. And sometimes, going out to eat that late can be tricky. Katherine Ashworth Brandt wants to make it easier for local Muslims who want to dine out during Ramadan. She's the founder of Dine After Dark, a new initiative calling for restaurants in D.C. to stay open later to accommodate fasting Muslims. Brandt, who isn't Muslim, says it’s good business to be inclusive.

During Ramadan, observant Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset. That usually means there are festive and huge iftars — the evening meal — all month. Buffets, parties, family potlucks, especially on Friday nights. But the trickier meal for American Muslims is suhoor, the pre-dawn meal, which usually happens around 3 or 4 a.m. For decades, IHOP, the home of that famous, smiling chocolate chip pancake breakfast, has been one of the only places across the country — from big cities to country towns, from Los Angeles to West Virginia — where a Muslim family can load up on a filling meal before the day-long fast ahead.

A new report that delves into the K-12 experiences of American Indian and Alaska Native students found that roughly half of them have never been exposed to their native languages in school or at home. The paper, which explores findings from the National Indian Education Study — a report that comes out every four years — found that students in schools with a larger share of American Indian and Alaska Native students were more likely to be exposed to native languages than were their peers in schools with fewer native students.

A powerful painting about immigration by a Yorktown High School student is now set to hang in the U.S. Capitol. The art features two young children looking to the side with pinched expressions while one of them holds a sign that reads, "Bring Our Mom Back." The artist behind the work is 17-year-old Dominick Cocozza, who notes on his website that his passion for art began "at a very young age."