ELL News Headlines

Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding. (Thanks to Teaching Tolerance for reminding us of this video!)

How do we love and care for one another? Award-winning author de la Peña sets out not only to count the ways but also to help young people recognize and take these tender mercies to heart, especially when times are tough and beyond the control of the adults around them.

The Sesame Workshop and the International Rescue Committee, a refugee aid group, won a first-of-its kind $100 million grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in late December for an ambitious education and outreach program designed to address the needs of displaced Syrian children. The program was selected for the five-year grant from a list of finalists for the foundation's 100&Change competition, which asked organizations to propose "bold solutions to critical problems of our time."

Prolific author Carole Boston Weatherford's picture book biography Schomburg:​ ​The​ ​Man​ ​Who​ ​Built​ ​a​ ​Library (Candlewick), about the Afro-Latino bibliophile and historian  Arturo Schomburg, has garnered the first-ever Walter Award in the Younger Readers category. Long Way Down (Atheneum) by Jason Reynolds won the top award in the Teen category. Reynolds's All American Boys, coauthored by Brendan Kiely, received the inaugural "Walter" in 2016. Both of this year's winners were selected as 2017 SLJ Best Books. In its third year, The Walter honors outstanding titles for young people that celebrate diversity.

Despite its widespread use — Paraguay is the only country in the Americas where the majority of the population speaks a single indigenous language — the Guaraní language has long been considered palatable for use on the streets and at home, but unsuitable in the spheres of power. Yet today, officials and intellectuals in Paraguay are working to promote a positive image of the language, in an effort to make good on the 1992 Constitution's aim to put it on equal footing with Spanish. It has been a slog. Centuries of subjugation made Guaraní a second-class language in the minds of many Paraguayans.

Too often, low-income, black and Latino students end up in schools with crumbling walls, old textbooks and unqualified teachers, according to a report released Thursday by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The commission said inequities are caused by the fact that schools are most funded with state and local tax dollars. More than 92 percent of funding comes from nonfederal sources, according to the Education Department.

A large poster hangs on the wall close to the door of Claudia Quezada's classroom in Franklin. The poster reads, "We can make a difference." Below the text is an illustration of children holding hands around the world. Quezada, an English Language Learner teacher at Johnson Elementary, said she likes the poster because of it's message of acceptance. Quezada did not know English when she moved to Franklin at the age of 10. Now the 28-year-old helps kids learn English in the same school district in which she grew up.

A federal judge in California has temporarily blocked the Trump administration's efforts to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program for undocumented immigrants, the Associated Press reports. On Tuesday, Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California in San Francisco ruled that the Department of Homeland Security must allow former DACA recipients who failed to renew their status by an October 5 deadline a chance to submit renewal applications for the program, which grants work permits and protection from deportation for 700,000 immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children.

The National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, Gene Luen Yang passed the baton to his successor Jacqueline Woodson on Tuesday. NPR takes a look at where young people's literature is now and where the new ambassador would like to take it in the coming year.

Ten years ago, girls were so scarce in high school computer science classes that the number of female students taking Advanced Placement tests in that subject could be counted on one hand in nine states. In five others, there were none. Latino and African American students were also in short supply, a problem that has bedeviled educators for years and hindered efforts to diversify the high-tech workforce. Now, an expansion of AP computer science classes is helping to draw more girls and underrepresented minorities into a field of growing importance for schools, universities and the economy.