ELL News Headlines

The skinny boy says he's 12, though he looks years younger. He points to a crayon drawing he created this summer, when he arrived at a U.S. government-supported childcare center in Raqqa, Syria. Therapists have known for decades that a primary way young children communicate and comprehend trauma is by drawing pictures. If that's true, these drawings on the wall are one collective scream.

The number of migrant parents entering the United States with children has surged to record levels in the three months since the White House ended family separations at the border, dealing the administration a deepening crisis three weeks before the midterm elections.

From a field of ripe cotton, the triangular tops of giant tents swoop up behind a covered fence next to a border crossing where drivers tow banged-up used vehicles into Mexico. From the outside, this is about all that's visible of the temporary shelter for migrant children set up on a remote stretch of West Texas desert. Reporters got a rare glimpse inside the facility on Friday. It opened in June outside the tiny town of Tornillo, Texas, and, at the time, hosted 400 teenage boys. Last month, the federal government announced it was expanding the shelter's capacity to 3,800 beds — making it the largest shelter in the system for kids who cross the border solo. One reason is that it is taking longer for children to be released from the shelters. According to Mark Greenberg, who worked in the Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services, some of the children's relatives are reluctant to claim them. HHS is now sharing sponsor information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE has since used that information to arrest at least 40 undocumented sponsors.

Hispanic Heritage month brings students to Kellogg Plaza for a very special show. Ballet Folklorico de California State University – San Marcos recently created a two part region dance showcase, La Raza de Folklore, for students on campus.

The public school system in Rochester, N.Y. is facing some serious challenges, and a team of reporters think they may find some solutions to those problems in Windsor, Ont., a city with some similar demographics and characteristics.

Hundreds of schools in Florida, North Carolina and Virginia were shuttered Friday as communities in the path of Hurricane Michael began to pick up the pieces from one of the strongest storms ever recorded in the United States. The hurricane made landfall Wednesday in the Florida Panhandle and then ripped through Georgia — where some schools closed earlier this week — North Carolina and Virginia.

Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Haitian Creole are the top five home languages for English-language learners in the nation's K-12 public schools, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Education.

Julie Scullen, an ILA member since 2005, is a teaching and learning specialist for secondary reading in Anoka-Hennepin School District in Minnesota, working with teachers of all content areas to foster literacy achievement. After overhearing a discouraging conversation among students in the library, she began to reflect more intently on literacy engagement. She writes, "As teachers, we all want our students to have engaging reading material. We all want our students to have a book in their hand and 'next book' on their mind. Unfortunately, we also know our ability to inspire readers can become lost in the push for coverage and the constant battle for instructional time.:

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo is a finalist for the National Book Award. Della Farrell of School Library Journal writes, "Magnificently crafted, Acevedo's bildungsroman in verse is a stunning account of a teen girl's path to poetry. Sophomore Xiomara Batista is simultaneously invisible and hyper visible at home, at school, and in her largely Dominican community in Harlem — her body is 'unhide-able' she tells readers early on, and she bristles at how others project their desires, insecurities, failures, and patriarchal attitudes toward her…. Acevedo's poetry is skillfully and gorgeously crafted, each verse can be savored on its own, but together they create a portrait of a young poet sure to resonate with readers long after the book's end." Read more from Xiomara in this interview with School Library Journal.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor says a passion for words and reading paved her way to the highest court in the country. She delivered that message recently at a Reading is Fundamental event here promoting literacy—and honoring her contributions to it, with her new children's book, Turning Pages: My Life Story. The book, aimed at 4- to 8-year-olds, describes how words riveted her, even before she could read. Lively family gatherings at Sotomayor's grandmother's New York City home quieted when Abuelita, her grandmother, shared poems about the island of Puerto Rico, "the tropical land our family had left behind." Sotomayor said she was transfixed by her grandmother's ability to "mesmerize the crowd, just with words," and her father's "poetry duels" with family members that demonstrated the power of the spoken word. To illustrate the book, Delacre integrated meaningful words and images — like Sotomayor's library card — into her work.