ELL News Headlines

Florianne Jimenez is a Ph.D. student in rhetoric and composition at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is also the Multilingual Specialist at the UMass Amherst Writing Center. She writes, “While it’s certainly easy to assume that multilingual students will just 'pick up' college-level English as they go, the truth is, a university classroom is a linguistically complex and challenging place. A student's language background can influence how well they’re doing in your class, as well as how included a student feels in your classroom community. As teachers, we can do a lot to make our classrooms more open to linguistic diversity. Instead of penalizing how students' language backgrounds differ from Standard English, we need to ensure that multilingual students don't fall behind."

As politicians in Washington try and figure out what to do with the DACA program — Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals — across the country, DACA recipients are working on their own plans ... trying to stay in the country if Congress doesn't act in time.

Across the country, demand for immersion programs is growing and states and districts are trying to keep up. Plutus Yang, Assistant Director at Hudson Way Immersion School, shares some best practices to keep in mind. He writes, "The popularity of language immersion programs is growing rapidly, but many schools are still struggling to establish strong, rigorous, and effective immersion programs. As both a Chinese immersion teacher and an administrator of a Chinese and Spanish immersion school, I have seen firsthand what holds many immersion programs back, and what allows others to flourish and take full advantage of this unique approach to language education."

In recent years, an increasing number of U.S.-born students have enrolled in Mexican schools. About half a million now attend classes south of the border, and educators on both sides are pushing for greater collaboration to help meet those students’ unique needs — among them, gaining language skills, adjusting to different education levels, and adapting to new school cultures and structures.

English Language Learners make up the fastest growing student group in the First State. Delaware's Rodel Foundation released a fact sheet recently detailing that growth.

Representatives from Osceola and Orange County school districts met with state Sen. Jack Latvala with a plea for help. Thousands of students have traveled to Central Florida from Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, and school officials said they don't have the proper resources to cope with the influx.

It was a dreary Sunday at first, as clouds hung over Tarken Rec Center in Castor Gardens. It even rained briefly, though that didn't stop members of Philly Open Soccer from setting up nets throughout the playground. After all, they'd already been rained out twice. This time, the weather held out and about 50 families made their way to the community event. Children as young as five could be seen kicking and tossing soccer balls around, their parents cheering them on as they made constant goals. Many of them arrived very recently to the United States.

When Edgardo Ortiz boarded a flight from Puerto Rico to Florida on Oct. 7, with his wife and 9-year-old daughter, he didn’t have a concrete plan for what would happen next. At Orlando International Airport, the family ran into Bridget Williams, the chief of staff for the Orange County school system, who, along with other district staffers, had set up a table at the airport five days earlier to greet Puerto Rican evacuees. They were there to inform them about schooling options and social services available in the Orlando area. Williams perked up when she overheard that Ortiz and his wife taught physics and chemistry at the University of Puerto Rico. By the end of the encounter, Ortiz and his wife had job offers to teach science at one of the district's high schools. The couple may start teaching as early as next week.

They're called "kings." All freshmen. All young men of color. And all determined to upend the dominant narrative about young black men in Washington, D.C. Their public high school — the all-male Ron Brown College Prep — is designed specifically to meet their needs. And for many of the young men, their needs are profound. Two reporters, Education Week's Kavitha Cardoza and NPR's Cory Turner, spent hundreds of hours with teachers, students, and parents from the school's earliest days to the final bell. These three episodes tell the story of Ron Brown's first year.

Some 5,700 houses and structures have been destroyed and many more damaged by the blazes that barreled through Northern California last week. About 100,000 people were displaced, temporarily or permanently. It is still too early to know how many of them were immigrants, who are in the most precarious position of any group. Because many of them are in the country illegally, they are ineligible for most disaster aid, raising concerns that those without places to live will move to other regions where housing is more plentiful and cheaper.