ELL News Headlines

"The greatest storytellers connect with readers through universal truths, and Uwiringiyimana tells her own profound story with clarity and honesty. After a heart-pounding cliff-hanger opening, Uwiringiyimana goes back in time to revisit her childhood in Uvira, a city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Although occasionally interrupted by bouts of war and subsequent migration, her childhood was rich and fulfilling. However, everything changed during a stay at a refugee camp…The title is a critical piece of literature, contributing to the larger refugee narrative in a way that is complex and nuanced but still accessible for a YA audience. VERDICT This poignant memoir is a must-have for teen collections."

The number of English Language Learners in our schools is growing and, at the same time, both the Every Student Succeeds Act and the Common Core standards are raising the bar for academic expectations.  This two-part series will be examining how teachers can best assist ELLs develop academic language and skills in writing argumentative essays, both which are highlighted in the Common Core. Today's responses come from Tan Huynh, Vicky Giouroukakis, Maureen Connolly, Margo Gottlieb, and Ivannia Soto.  You can listen to a 10-minute conversation I had with Tan, Vicky and Maureen on my BAM! Radio Show. You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.

Just a few months ago, not many knew about these five fourth-graders from a low-income community in Indianapolis. But now, the Panther Bots, a thriving robotics team at Pleasant Run Elementary School, have become the face of a success story about a group of kids who were taunted with racial slurs but were too determined to let that affect their confidence. Earlier this month, they found themselves being honored on the Senate floor of the Indiana Statehouse. The group traveled to Louisville on Sunday to compete in a worldwide robotics contest.

A few years ago, educators in some districts that promote social-emotional learning told me they'd noticed some inconsistent messaging about the approach. In some schools, SEL was pitched to teachers as a tool for behavior management. In other schools, which were typically full of students from higher income families, it was billed as a way to boost the types of skills graduates will need for college and careers. Some boosters of social-emotional learning have urged educators and policymakers to be more thoughtful about how they discuss and carry out SEL. That difference in messaging can send messages to students, sometimes reinforcing stereotypes, they say.

Jeanette Vizguerra, a mother of four who has been living in a Denver church to avoid deportation, has been named one of TIME magazine's 100 most influential people in the world.

It's a Saturday afternoon at Boston University's School of Education, where Elliot Kastner, a former Dartmouth College football player turned mechanical engineer, is addressing a group of students. He works through the geometry, the engineering and the many failures that led to his developing a tackling robot now used for football practice in the NFL and the NCAA. Adrian Mims looks on with a smile. He's a big fan of football — it's a game day and he’s wearing a Patriots T-shirt. And since 2009, Mims has made it his mission to use experiences like this one to help African-American and Latino students get to the highest heights of high school math with The Calculus Project.

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.