ELL News Headlines

Kids don't learn unless they get a little dirty. That's the philosophy of the man who runs the career and technical education program at Monument Valley High School in Kayenta, Arizona, where students from the Navajo Nation get hands-on instruction in caring for animals. Special correspondent Lisa Stark of Education Week reports on how the program prepares students for careers, college and more.

Anthony Barela, a principal at Vista High School in California, has been searching for technology tools to help ELLs and their teachers. "How can we give our students access to information, so it doesn’t have to exhaust the teachers too?" asks Barela. Technology can help make differentiated classroom instruction easier for teachers, he says. But he also hopes to bring culturally relevant content that is relatable for students into classrooms. "The thing that is often hard to find is the cultural component," says Barela. "If you don't have a social or emotional connection, you can have all the software in the world but never move forward."

Writing poetry can be challenging in itself, but writing it an unfamiliar language presents a whole new level of difficulty. Twelve international students from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have accepted this challenge. "This event [A Sense of Place] is different because we recite in English, our second language, about things that are so dear to us," Serbian-born sophomore Nina Radulovic said. "It's the perfect opportunity for everyone to see international students' diversity and share it with the campus community."

Some immigrants in the tri-state area are giving up free food from the government and charitable groups, saying they'd rather risk hunger than deportation.  Several local anti-poverty groups tell the I-Team their immigrant clients are asking for help getting off the food stamp rolls because they fear accepting the benefit will expose them to scrutiny from federal immigration officials. 

The Every Student Succeeds Act sought to give states flexibility to put their own stamp on accountability systems, including setting their own goals for student achievement and moving beyond reading and math test scores in rating student and school performance.

More than a third of schools in Syria have closed since the war began six years ago; a recent report found more than 1.7 million children and youth are not attending classes. David Miliband of the International Rescue Committee joins Judy Woodruff to discuss the devastating effects of trauma and the long-term consequences of a generation of children missing out on quality education.

Described as passionate and tireless, 29-year-old teacher Sean Pang arrived in the United States from Hong Kong at age 6. He knew little English, learning the language as he attended a Silver Spring, MD elementary school. By 23, he had come full circle, returning to work in the Montgomery system with a master’s degree in teaching English language arts.

Florinda Lorenzo has been in the U.S. illegally for more than a decade but checks in with federal immigration agents in Baltimore several times a year. Until recently, it had become routine, almost like a trip to the dentist. Many undocumented immigrants — like Lorenzo —are not in hiding. Hundreds of thousands of them report to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on a regular basis. They've been allowed to stay because past administrations considered them a low priority for deportation. But with the Trump administration's crackdown on illegal immigration, that once-routine check-in has become a nerve-wracking experience. Lorenzo came to the U.S. from Guatemala 14 years ago. She has three children, two of them U.S. citizens who were born here.

Growing up in rural Tennessee, Nathaniel Provencio was not fond of school and was, in his own words, "a terrible student." As a Hispanic boy in the rural South, "I never saw myself in any of my teachers," Provencio said. He expected to follow his parents, garment-factory workers, into manual labor, and his upbringing was challenged by spells of poverty. In high school, he joined a student club, called Future Teachers of America, not because he was interested in education but because the activities — including tutoring youngsters — got him out of math class occasionally. Then he discovered that he enjoyed it — and decided to become a teacher. Today, Provencio leads Minnieville Elementary School in Woodbridge, Va., and has been named Washington Post Principal of the Year for the D.C. metropolitan area.

Tennessee caused a stir earlier this year when it ran an audit of the state's 2015 graduating class. The number crunchers in Nashville reported that nearly a third of students who received a diploma didn't complete the required coursework. One in three. A further review of the data revealed a philosophical disconnect between state-level administrators and many rural districts regarding a foreign language requirement for students.