ELL News Headlines

When Trayvon McKoy moved to Washington, D.C., from Maryland about two years ago, he'd never played drums before in his life. Then, when he enrolled at Ballou High School, he says he didn't have much choice. Now music is so much a part of his life that this fall he's headed to Bethune-Cookman University in Florida to major in music production. Maybe Trayvon's story doesn't seem unique, but he and the rest of the class of 2017 at Ballou will go down in history. They are the first class to be accepted, entirely, to college. "Everyone walks around with their heads high now," Trayvon says.

Lax oversight, state underfunding and the end of a federal consent decree that in part addressed bilingual education have contributed to Chicago's long history of violating state bilingual education law, a Chicago Reporter investigation has found. As a result, English learners go without legally required services recommended by experts, such as books in their native language and teachers who speak that language or have English as a Second Language training.

It's not unusual for teenagers to take a summer trip after graduating high school, but Malala Yousafzai is a bit different. The 19-year-old Pakistani woman attended her last day of secondary school in Birmingham, England, on Friday, a milestone for the activist who has fought for girls' education. She said on her new Twitter account that she would begin traveling next week to the Middle East, Africa and Latin America to meet with girls.

You no doubt have heard and read your share of graduation speeches, but you probably haven’t read or heard one like this. This extraordinary speech was delivered a few weeks ago by Coral Ortiz, an 18-year-old who just received her diploma from James Hillhouse High School in New Haven, Conn.  Ortiz was a student representative on the New Haven Board of Education and the State Board of Education and is headed to Yale University, where she plans to major in political science and follow her interest in the social sciences. In her speech, she delivers a powerful message: "So to those that believed my classmates and I were incapable, I have decided to leave a message for you: To the teacher who said my classmates and I would fail and that the taxpayers wasted resources on our education — today, we teach you that you were wrong."

Social activist Innosanto Nagara wanted to find a fun book to read to his 2-year-old son that also talked about the importance of social justice. He wasn't looking for the typical fiction written for children, instead, he was looking for unique narratives — by writers of color and/or authors who can speak about social issues through their own experiences. Nagara couldn't find any. So he wrote one. But not all parents have the time to do what Innosanto Nagara did. For those who can't, NPR has compiled a list — with help from Teaching for Change — of books that frame big issues through a lens children can understand.

What role does music play in our national dialogue about immigration? Six young musicians, rooted in six different countries, gathered at Ellis Island, and in Manhattan, to explore that question in a new composition inspired by Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land."

About 30 students attending a Purdue Polytechnic Institute robotics camp first turned their workshop into LEGO Land for a week and then received a visit from Billy, a robot made out of LEGOs and mechanical sensors. Lauro Ojeda, a research scientist at the University of Michigan, led a demonstration at the camp Friday featuring Billy, which he had programmed to complete a task that all kids are familiar with — drawing.  The annual robotics camp allows students, ages 8 to 14, to be immersed in the world of robotics for three hours a day during a week-long camp, said camp director Joe Fuehne, who also is director of the Purdue Polytechnic Institute in Columbus. But this year, Fuehne and his team changed the strategy behind one of the camps. For the first time since establishing it 12 years ago, Fuehne partnered with IT Robotics, which recently opened in North Vernon, to offer a free camp specifically for Latino students.

For Dorchester parent Roberto Cardoso, the pressure to find a summer camp for Lianna, his 8-year-old daughter and only child, never goes away. He"s already worried about what she"ll be doing in the summer of 2018. This summer, though, they lucked out. Lianna, an incoming fourth-grader at the Roger Clap School, is attending a free, five-week summer program at the Hale Reservation in Westwood, a place her father had always wanted to send her to but was too costly for them. This year, she is one of 2,200 Boston Public School students who were selected for the "5th Quarter of Learning," a new component of the city's larger summer learning project that combines academics and outdoor recreational activities.

Learning and laughter filled the trailer classrooms at Knollwood Elementary School last month as English as a Second Language students from across Rowan County participated in a summer camp. Sixty-four rising first-, second- and third-grade ESL students came to Knollwood to experience a summer-camp atmosphere while expanding and reinforcing the English skills they had gained throughout the school year.Sixty-four rising first-, second- and third-grade ESL students came to Knollwood to experience a summer-camp atmosphere while expanding and reinforcing the English skills they had gained throughout the school year.

Abigail Pineda, a future Kaiser High School student, was one of 145 regional students who attended a week-long camp as part of the Inland Empire Future Leaders Program at Idyllwild Pines Camp. Although the program is currently available for every student in the region, Angelica Pineda, the mother of Abby, said many parents don't know about it, thus preventing their kids from taking part in a successful program. It was founded in 1985 to motivate Latino students to finish high school and attend college, said Dr. Tom Rivera, one of the founders.