ELL News Headlines

The debut author talks about the novel's many iterations, why it's important to talk about mental health in YA, and what she's working on next.

A few years ago, Cleveland Public Schools found that more than half of their students were chronically absent, missing at least 10 percent of school. While they've made steady progress to address the problem, like may school districts around the country, they still have a ways to go. Special correspondent Kavitha Cardoza of Education Week reports.

With the nation's school-age population becoming more linguistically and culturally diverse, early-childhood educators should do more to embrace the differences that the nation's youngest English-learners bring to the classroom, a new report from the Migration Policy Institute concludes.

At a time when federal, state and institutional policies are backing away from helping low-income, first-generation and ethnic and racial minority students, a few colleges are spending significant amounts of time and money on providing such help, using a model piloted by City University of New York, or CUNY. Some of these schools are trying to buck the trends that are making it even harder than it was before for these students to get to and through college. But they're also looking out for their own self-interest. Public university and college budgets are increasingly dependent on how many students graduate. And all institutions, including private ones, are struggling with enrollment declines. The students in the greatest supply are precisely those who need the most help.

They had come so far together, almost 3,000 miles across three countries and three borders: a mother with three children, fleeing a gang in El Salvador that had tried to kill her teenage son. But now, in a frigid Border Patrol facility in Arizona where they were seeking asylum, Silvana Bermudez was told she had to say goodbye. Her kids were being taken from her.

On Mondays during the school year, we post a photograph that appeared elsewhere in The New York Times, remove its caption and ask students “What’s Going On in This Picture?” Teachers across grade levels and subjects have told us again and again how powerful of a learning tool such a simple activity can be. In this post Claudia Leon and Margaret Montemagno, two English as a New Language (E.N.L.) teachers explain how they use the feature to help students improve their writing.

Gregg Behr is a co-chair of the Remake Learning Network and the executive director of The Grable Foundation, a Pittsburgh-based philanthropic organization, which funds a number of programs that support public education. In this commentary, he writes, "The census keeps kids housed, fed, rested, and safe. In order for students to come to school ready to learn in 2020 and the decade beyond, an accurate count is crucial. It won't, however, be easy."

When Astou asked her seventh grade students to write personal essays, she modeled the assignment with a personal story of her own. Astou came to the U.S. from Senegal when she was seven and grew up 10 blocks away from where she teaches. Now, the 25-year-old is one of nearly 9,000 teachers with DACA across the country — without the program, many of them would be barred from professional work.

It was not a conventional job interview. At one of his first meetings with Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray, to discuss the job of New York City schools chancellor, Richard A. Carranza serenaded them with a mariachi song: 'Maria Elena.' "That's what mariachi music does — it keeps our kids connected to who they are," he said in 2016, when he was inducted into the Mariachi Hall of Fame. At the same ceremony, Mr. Carranza described himself as "really a mariachi masquerading as a superintendent."

Hurricane Maria has taken people away from Yzmar Roman. The 16-year-old Puerto Rican high school student's two best friends moved to the U.S. mainland in the wake of last September's devastating storm, one to Florida and the other to Tennessee. Her father, a policeman, has been working long hours since Hurricane Maria and doesn't have much time to learn about her day when he's home. And her mother's job as a bank teller also means she's busy. Yzmar tries to lean on the friends she has, but she hears about their daily struggles since the storm and knows they have their own burdens. So when a teacher at Dr. Maria Cadilla High School in Arecibo, about an hour west of San Juan, noticed a change in Yzmar and sent her to a social worker, Yzmar was grateful.