ELL News Headlines

It just so happened that as Hurricane Florence was approaching the Carolinas, teacher Justin Parmenter was giving a lesson on empathy to his students in a seventh-grade language arts class at Waddell Language Academy in Charlotte. In this post, Parmenter writes about the real-life lesson in empathy kids can get from the hurricane.

Over the past year, a flurry of new immigration policy directives and actions have gushed forth like water from a broken fire hydrant, layering over each other and causing confusion for schools and other service providers. The shifting landscape means educators must proactively consider how the current U.S. political climate is affecting their increasing number of students from immigrant families, including those who are undocumented and whose families are of mixed legal status.

In 1930s Kentucky, in coal country, books made their way to remote and isolated regions of the state through The Pack Horse Library Project.

Teton County schools had the largest percentage of English Language Learners in Wyoming last year, making the district of interest to the U.S. Department of Education. On Thursday, Jose Viana, assistant deputy secretary and director of the Office of English Language Acquisition, visited Jackson Hole High School — where principal Scott Crisp is a campus fellow in the federal department — and Munger Mountain Elementary School, the state’s first dual immersion school.

Kateryna Haggerty, a high school English teacher in Queens, N.Y., uses graphic organizers to help her English-language learners compare and contrast characters in literature. This model, designed to allow a gradual release of responsibility, helps students with limited or interrupted formal education develop fluency and independence in the classroom.

Trauma-informed teaching has become a popular topic of conversation in recent years, as teachers try to adapt their methods to best serve the kids in front of them. It all starts with understanding what kids who have experienced trauma might be feeling.

With rain and wind from Hurricane Florence already lashing the Carolina coasts, school officials are worried about the massive amounts of rain the storm is expected to dump in the region. Whatever relief they felt when Hurricane Florence was downgraded from a Category 4 to a Category 2 storm was quickly replaced with anxiety over the widespread flooding could result from the storm's effects lingering into next week.

More Latinos are graduating from college than in years past, but they still lag far behind their white peers: about 32 percent graduate from college in four years compared with 45 percent of white students, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The Council for Adult and Experiential Learning and the Latino student advocacy group Excelencia in Education have joined forces to introduce an initiative this academic year to shrink this gap by helping working, adult students.

Around the globe, more scholars are now threatened and displaced than since World War II began. In response, U.S. universities have sponsored endangered scholars and recently created a consortium that offers a broader academic community to refugee scholars threatened by war and authoritarian governments.

Salem — and a handful of other small- to mid-size cities — is blurring the lines between the role the school district and the city play in children's lives. It's main vehicle for that work is City Connects, a student-support system that city and school officials rolled out in pre-K-8 schools last year. The idea is that focusing on student's individual needs in four areas — academics, health, family, and social-emotional well-being — and matching them with the right kinds of assistance and enrichment programs, will lead to more successful citizens in the long run.