ELL News Headlines

In the age of standardized testing, screen time and what some see as a generation of excessively coddled children, a new movement of preschools is pushing kids outdoors, come rain or shine, heat or cold, to connect with nature and learn to take measured risks, in addition to math and the ABCs. Jeffrey Brown reports from Midland, Michigan.

Education professor Xia Chao, an education researcher awarded by the American Educational Research Association and the Literacy Research Association, is working on a new project involving ESL students in the Pittsburgh area called Savings Stories. Saving Stories is a collaborative effort by Baldwin-Whitehall teacher Renee Christman and Paul Kelly, librarian at Whitehall Public Library, to turn stories from local refugee families into bilingual picture books.

This gorgeous tale about a father/son fishing trip shows the interconnectedness of family and the inexorable way that generational history impacts the present. The story is told from the boy's perspective, as his father wakes him long before dawn to go fishing… The quiet time together provides opportunities for the man to talk about his past life fishing with his brother in a different pond in Vietnam, long ago before the war and before coming to America. After they return home, triumphant, with a bucket of fish, the boy contemplates his role as the youngest in the family — no longer a baby — and even though he is sad that both his parents have to work, he knows there will be a happy, love-filled family dinner later that night.

The Trump administration ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that protects nearly 800,000 undocumented youth from deportation. The announcement places a new pressure on Congress to add immigration reform to their fall legislative docket. John Yang reports on the decision and the reaction from so-called “dreamers,” who are taking to the street to protest.

I’m writing this blog on the floor of an empty house in Northwest Houston. Hurricane Harvey has finally moved off to the east. I teach students who have recently relocated to our city.  My NELD classes (Newcomer English Language Development) are students who were attending U.S. schools for only a few days when this hurricane struck. Many are coming from places of war, others have moved to Houston for a better life from Latin American countries and still, others have relocated here with family because my school is located in an Oil and Gas corridor. So what will I do for my class? I’m still deciding on all the particulars of the lessons but I know what my overarching theme will be for this first unit.

Juana la Iguana, an entertainment and learning platform that instills educational and global values to children in Spanish and English, has announced that it was selected by the prestigious Miami Children's Museum to debut its new musical, The Mystery of Musical Notes.

Joseph Maghamez is planning to spend the rest of his life in Canada, but he still doesn't want to waste any time. After arriving from Syria last year, Maghamez, 20, has been focused on getting into university as quickly as possible. "It was my first priority," he said in an interview with CBC Toronto. And next week, it will be a reality when Maghamez begins studying life sciences at the University of Toronto Mississauga.

Jose Gonzalez's parents brought him to the United States from Mexico just before his second birthday. In the 23 years since, he graduated high school with honors, earned an Ivy League degree, and received recognition from the Obama White House for his work teaching students in immigrant-filled Los Angeles charter schools. Now, Gonzalez faces a potentially cruel twist of fate: he could go from being lauded by the White House to being a target for deportation as part of President Donald Trump's widespread immigration crackdown.

The Trump administration announced Tuesday it would begin to unwind an Obama-era program that allows younger undocumented immigrants to live in the country without fear of deportation, calling the program unconstitutional but offering a partial delay to give Congress a chance to address the issue.

Responding to pleas from teachers, advocates, and students, the Philadelphia School District this year is implementing mandatory training in keeping the system’s tens of thousands of immigrant children safe and supported in the current political climate. Every school-based employee, from principal to cafeteria worker, is to receive instruction in everything from what information to release if immigration agents arrive at a school (none) to how to communicate with parents who speak another language.