ELL News Headlines

There's a strong and growing demand for schools to provide instruction across grade levels and subjects that leads to students who are bilingual and biliterate. In this second installment on the growth in dual-language learning, one expert advises schools to take a year to plan a new program and to commit to a multi-year endeavor to teach students to read, write, and speak fluently in two languages. Rosa Molina is the executive director of the Association for Two-Way & Dual-Language Education, which provides technical assistance and professional development to two-way immersion programs in California and the Western region of the United States.

Krista Holland wanders past huddles of people at a storm shelter in Chapel Hill, N.C. Some are wearing Red Cross vests; others are in bathrobes and pajamas. The Wilmington principal is looking for any of her students who may have evacuated to the shelter before Hurricane Florence made landfall. Holland worries about the uncertainty her students are facing. Over a week after the storm made landfall, more than 60,000 North Carolina students are starting another week without school. Holland also evacuated, and has been staying with family in Raleigh. Friends who stayed behind have told her her home is mostly unscathed, and her school, Anderson Elementary, has some water damage. "Nothing that can't be cleaned up and repaired," Holland says, "and it probably will not take long. ... The lack of a sense of normalcy for the kids, I think that's where my heart aches the most."

Elam Reyna sat through her first parenting class, filled with worry. The housekeeper from Guatemala was adjusting to being a day-to-day mother, nearly 13 years after leaving her home country and placing her two sons and their baby sister in the care of her grandparents. Now the boys had made a similar journey, fleeing gang threats. They were struggling to become a family again. Elam Reyna — who asked to be identified by her middle name and only part of her last name because she is in the United States illegally — was determined to bring order to her home and be a good mother, even if seeking help with her sons could jeopardize their chances of staying in the United States.

In her middle-grade memoir Path to the Stars, Sylvia Acevedo draws a straight if improbable line from her childhood as a Mexican American girl in New Mexico through a career as a literal rocket scientist to her current post as CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA.

There's a strong and growing demand for schools to provide instruction across grade levels and subjects that leads to students who are bilingual and biliterate. In this second installment on the growth in dual-language learning, one expert argues that districts should always focus on the needs of students and their families. David Nieto, the executive director of the BUENO Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and an assistant research professor at the university's school of education. BUENO is an acronym for Bilinguals United for Education and New Opportunities. Nieto has also worked as a state-level English-language-learner program administrator in Illinois and Massachusetts.

Puerto Rico's school system was struggling long before Hurricane Maria struck a year ago. But the disaster exacerbated deep problems, as schools were destroyed, thousands of children moved to the U.S. mainland and students struggle with trauma. Now, special correspondent Kavitha Cardoza of Education Week reports, the system is at a crossroads as the schools chief advocates for charter schools.

One year ago, Hurricane Maria ripped through Puerto Rico. For the educators, students, and parents who remain on the island, nothing has been the same since. In sheer practical terms, they are grappling with lingering storm damage, shifts in school assignments after hundreds of buildings were closed in the wake of the hurricane, and the implications of a system-wide reorganization. Amid it all, the island’s education leaders are still trying to grasp the extent of the trauma they and their school communities are suffering, and how best to address that emotional and psychological pain.

Last month, the Providence public schools were sharply criticized by the U.S. Department of Justice for failing to provide adequate services to its English language learners. In a settlement agreement with Justice, the School Department agreed to make sweeping changes to how students are identified as needing language services, what types of services are provided and promised to hire more teachers trained in this field. Providence isn't alone. The Justice Department has entered into similar agreements with Boston, Worcester, Arizona and California.

When the heavy rains from Tropical Storm Florence finally let up, the operations crew from the New Hanover County district in North Carolina found flooded classrooms, leaking roofs, downed trees, blown-out light bulbs on athletic fields, a massive sink hole in front of a high school with a toppled tree blocking the driveway, and no electricity in most schools. But of all the damage that Superintendent Tim Markley had seen, there's one image he can't shake: the sight of one of his teachers, arriving at a shelter.

Florence, which struck the Carolinas as a Category 1 hurricane Friday and continues to breed tornadoes and floods on the East Coast, has taken a particularly harsh toll on North Carolina's most vulnerable residents — tens of thousands of homeless, working poor and farmworkers, many of whom are undocumented. Homeless shelters have seen an influx of people who rode out the storm at emergency evacuation centers but now have nowhere to go. Advocates for farmworkers have said many did not know the Hurricane Florence was coming, because there were few warnings in Spanish, and stayed in crowded housing facilities with inadequate food and water. Others who went to shelters are nervous about leaving them, afraid they will be taken into custody by immigration agents.