ELL News Headlines

Finn McLaren was a shy teen who never showed an interest in sports or school clubs. He hadn’t quite found his place or an activity that sparked his interest. But when a group from the University of Michigan conducted a maker workshop at his local library in the summer of 2016, his mother saw "a total transformation."

A group of fourth graders were piling magazines atop paper pillars of different shapes: triangles, circles, squares and pentagons. The young scientists and engineers guessed which would hold the most, and tested their theories until each pillar came crashing down, prompting shrieks of surprise. In this skyscraper lesson, the students at Throggs Neck, a subsidized housing development in the Bronx, used the scientific method to test their theories, said Carlos Montoya, a teacher with the Salvadori Center for the past three years. Children can see buildings all over New York, but until they try using different materials themselves, they might not understand what holds them up.

Three-fourths of the roughly 500 students at Islington Junior Middle School in Toronto, Ontario, speak a language other than English at home. There are also a growing number of refugee children from Syria settling here, many of whom have had interrupted schooling and are not at grade level in their home language.

A conversation on Twitter evolved into a movement, We Need Diverse Books. That was in 2014. School Library Journal (SLJ) thought it was time to learn more. With the support of Baker & Taylor, SLJ has launched a survey about children’s and young adult book collections in school and public libraries — they want to know how diverse titles are being selected and acquired in these institutions, where there are gaps in collections, and how popular the books are with library users.

Hundreds of students are seated in a gym on a recent weekday at Shawnee High School. They just wrapped up the morning portion of the ESL Newcomer Academy's 11th Global Homecoming Exhibition. The gym is filled with tables showing multicultural student projects, and there are also performances throughout the day. The 600 or so students that attend JCPS' ESL Newcomer Academy are from places such as Angola, Rwanda, Cuba, Iran and Tanzania. And right now, they're spread out among four different schools. But next year, they’ll all be consolidated in one location: the Phoenix School of Discovery in the Buechel neighborhood. The move is part of JCPS Superintendent Marty Pollio's plan for his first 100 days, which he announced last month. Listen to the player above to hear students and teachers speak about how this consolidation will affect English-language learners.

Thomas S. Woods-Tucker vividly remembers his high school’s media center in Cotton Plant, AR. He would pore over the Arkansas Democrat and the Arkansas Gazette and spend time on the first computer he’d ever seen, an IBM Tandy 1000. "I have no idea what the computer cost back then, but I am sure it was a lot," he says. "But this small, rural school purchased one for us. Our librarian knew where the future was going, and the impact it would have on us." Woods-Tucker now leads Princeton City School District in Cincinnati. The district encompasses 10 schools, each with a school library, along with a mobile media center that roams the community each summer. Inside are games, puppets, stuffed animals, maker space activities, and Chromebooks.

Districts throughout the United States are starting dual language immersion programs at rapid rates. When these programs are started quickly, without a solid foundation or in-depth planning, problems arise that hinder the academic and language development of the students, as well as the overall implementation of the immersion programs. There are seven essential components of a dual language program that districts can follow to ensure the success of these programs. 

The school system welcomed its new manager of English learners Tuesday, according to the superintendent, who once oversaw the new hire when they worked together at South High Community School several years ago. Carmen Melendez comes to the position having most recently worked as head of North Attleboro High School’s guidance department.

On Rebecca Palacios's first day in front of a classroom, one of her white students picked up his chair and threw it toward her, declaring that he refused to be taught by a "Mexican teacher." Growing up in the 1950s and ’60s, Palacios learned about American discrimination against Latinos first-hand. Her father, a World War II veteran who worked for the public-park service in Texas, spoke frequently about the daily humiliations of being a Latino in America — of not being able to eat in certain restaurants or use certain water fountains. He would recount stories of teachers prohibiting him from speaking Spanish in school, sometimes hitting him when he spoke it with his friends.  

If you're a kid or the parent of one, you have no shortage of choices when it comes to family-friendly TV shows. Fifty years ago, the options were much more limited. And educational programs for kids were a relatively new genre. Lesli Rotenberg, senior vice president and general manager of children's media and education at PBS, joins 1A to talk about what the future of kids TV looks like and TV's role in the education of children today.