ELL News Headlines

Yerianne Roldán wants to be a graphic designer, or maybe a writer, or maybe both. Her good friend and classmate, Zuleyka Avila, has already made up her mind. She's going to be a pediatrician. Those plans hit a bump in the road this fall, though, when Hurricane Maria tore through Puerto Rico, where both girls lived with their families. Forced to leave the island — much of which is still without power — they've both relocated to Orlando. Both girls are continuing senior year at Colonial High School, a public school where more than half of the 240 faculty and staff members have family ties to Puerto Rico, including the principal. At Colonial, there's a lot of attention on going to college. Which is why, a few weeks after they've both settled into their classes, they are called, together, to the college specialist's office.

On Thursday, the GOP tax bill passed in the House of Representatives. The bill includes a $1.5 trillion corporate tax cut and eliminates many individual tax breaks which would have a major impact on students, parents and more. Here is a breakdown of how the bill could impact students, parents and savers.

Ask the students in the Mohawk Club at Massena high school whether they've been on the receiving end of negative stereotypes, and their answer is quick and sharp. "We see that we're always the troublemakers or that we're bad kids," says Amanda Rourke, the club's president. Mallory Sunday adds, "they don't understand who we are as a people." She and other club members live on the Akwesasne Mohawk reservation right next to Massena, along the U.S.-Canada border and the St. Lawrence River. One-tenth of the student body at the high school is Native American. These Mohawk students are trying to fight that discrimination by sharing their history, culture, and food with their fellow students.

Why do we need dreamers? Dreamers have the power to change the world by envisioning new ways of doing things, coming up with innovative ideas, combating powerlessness with possibility, looking beyond established obstacles, and finding the means to bring aspirations to fruition. The picture book biographies featured here introduce nine individuals who have dreamed big, fought against impossible odds, and persevered to achieve magnificent things.

Growing up in New Jersey, the Olympic fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad used to fashion tiny hijabs out of tissues to wrap around the heads of her Barbie dolls so they'd look more like her and her sisters.  Now, Muhammad is the face of the first hijab-wearing Barbie doll. It's a feat she described on Monday, when the doll was unveiled, as "amazing."

The percentage of Hispanic students in the Yakima County graduating high school and going on to college or trade schools continues to grow, but experts say more can be done to boost those numbers.

In the first day in her Orlando classroom, Karen Espino found a group of children to whom she could relate. Before arriving in Florida about a month ago, she had spent weeks in her ground-level apartment in San Juan without power or running water, and with a crippling uncertainty about the future. In her new classroom at Lake Nona Middle School, where she teaches English as a Second Language, she has met about a dozen students who were displaced by the storm. Just like her, they had left their homes behind, found their way to an unfamiliar school in Orlando, and begun new lives.

"Should we sell the house, or walk away from the mortgage?" Those are questions that thousands of young immigrants are now asking themselves after they received permission to stay in the U.S. under an Obama-era program. For people like Cristian Mendoza, answers are not easy to come by. "Honestly, I don't know," says Mendoza, 30, in the living room of a home he bought for his parents in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago. "Our last resort is try to sell it." Cristian, a dietitian, bought the three-bedroom home two years ago with his younger sister, Laura. They paid just under $400,000 and made a $20,000 down payment. Cristian had been saving up to buy a home since high school.

In the United States today, one child out of every four under the age of 18 is of Latinx descent. While a large proportion of these children are proficient English speakers, there remain many who are not. Yet a lack of English proficiency is not a reason for children to be left behind academically. It is gratifying to see publishers stepping up to the plate and meeting the needs of these children. All the series reviewed below are for lower elementary grades and cover a variety of topics that complement or supplement classroom learning.

Many Puerto Ricans who survived hurricane Maria have been working frantically to restore their lives in a new home. Many are teachers, and they've come to Orlando to find jobs. They may never go back.