ELL News Headlines

Kyle Redford is a 5th grade teacher at Marin Country Day School, a K-8 school in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is also the education editor for the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity. She writes, "Today, teaching global competency hardly seems novel. In fact, in a rapidly changing political and environmental landscape, focusing on the development of global competency seems urgent. The ability to imagine other perspectives and recognize one's own point of view is essential to understanding the current complexities related to immigration, environmental challenges, and racial and religious tensions at home and abroad. Additionally, studying any environmental, political, economic, or social system without recognizing its global interdependence seems limited."

According to a February 2016 report, "Between 2006 and 2013, the foreign-born population in Buffalo increased by 95 percent, and the most recent American Community Survey reports that the city is home to over 22,000 foreign-born residents." The influx of refugees and immigrants over the last decade reflects the city's pro-immigrant stance and has also made the Buffalo Public School System the most language diverse in the state. In fact, Buffalo is home to more language diversity than New York City — there are seven top languages in Buffalo schools, and more than 80 different languages in all.

School districts that fail to address the anxieties experienced by undocumented students as a result of federal immigration policies of the Trump administration may be violating their students' constitutional rights to a meaningful education, said Thomas Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF).

Katherine Huete Galeano teaches junior high special education at a charter school in the Gage Park community of Chicago. Huete Galeano, who has Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) status, is in her second year of Teach for America, which has 100 undocumented members teaching 6,000 students across 11 states. Huete Galeano says Teach for America was one of the few places that recognized her skill set and life experiences that better allow her to relate to her students, many of whom share the same fears she did as a child.

Mayor Bill de Blasio this week pushed ahead with plans to make New York City one of nation's few big cities to offer free, full-day preschool for all 3-year-olds­­. His proposal builds on widespread consensus that high-quality pre-K programs can have a huge positive impact on the lives of children – especially low-income ones – as well as on the parents and family.

The La Grande School District is set to receive a boost from the state that will help students from different cultures shine.  The Oregon Department of Education has awarded a $45,000 grant to the school district for its English Language Learners program, which serves students for whom English is their second language. Some money from the $45,000 grant will be used to train teachers to help ELL students better understand academic languages through the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol teaching model.

New York City has announced an ambitious plan to extend universal preschool to 3 year olds. Mayor Bill de Blasio says the effort will expand on the city's current program for 4 year olds.

Each year, about 65,000 undocumented students graduate from U.S. high schools, and most are protected from deportation under an Obama administration policy called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. But many DACA students are on edge, unsure about what the future holds for them or their families. Special correspondent Kavitha Cardoza of Education Week reports.

In this op-ed, Sonia Nazario, journalist and author of Enrique's Journey writes, "This may surprise you: The U.S. knows a lot about how to dramatically reduce the number of immigrants crossing our southern border illegally. We have programs in place that work. But few politicians promote these efforts. And funding for them soon could be cut….It sounds radical, but this is what works: Instead of adding fire power, fencing and drones at the border, we must deal directly with powerful forces pushing people out of their home countries and toward the U.S. The majority of the border-crossers in the Southwest come from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala — all three are among the most dangerous nations on Earth."

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, students already have the option to spend at least half their day learning in a language other than English at 87 elementary, middle and high schools. Two schools even offer this "dual-language" instruction to preschoolers. Now, district officials want to add even more preschool classrooms into this mix.