ELL News Headlines

The 2017 Pura Belpré award winners were announced last month, showcasing some of the most influential Latino children's literature of the year.

All eyes are on Houston, and they were supposed to be on the city for a different reason: Kickoff for Super Bowl LI will take place on Sunday, as the Patriots and the Falcons face off to see who will take home the Lombardi Trophy. But now, in the shadow of the biggest sporting event of the year, the international, diverse city is scrambling to figure out how to deal with a crisis it didn’t see coming. Houston welcomes more refugees than any city in the country each year, and many of them will be working at the Super Bowl as contracted companies have been able to partner with resettlement organizations.

After more than a decade of seeking out engaging literature for young people from across the world, the United States Board on Books for Young People (USBBY) continues this endeavor by highlighting impressive international titles that contain literary and artistic value as well as unique cultural perspectives. The 2017 Outstanding International books (OIB) list gathers 41 titles that will delight and enlighten readers with a variety of experiences found within narratives and informational texts from or set in countries such as Brazil, Netherlands, India, Norway, Australia, and our neighbor to the north, Canada.

Liberia has had more than its fair shares of challenges, and is trying to rebuild after enduring a devastating Ebola epidemic and civil war. Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro meets an American woman who has made her home in Liberia, started her own school and now provides education and scholarships for girls.

A federal appeals court has upheld an injunction allowing refugee students with limited English proficiency in a Pennsylvania school district to transfer from an alternative school for underachievers to a regular high school with special help for English-language learners. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, in Philadelphia, unanimously ruled for a group that includes students with limited or interrupted formal education, or SLIFE, who had fled war and violence in countries including Burma, Mozambique, Somalia, Sudan, and Tanzania.  The Lancaster school district assigned the students, who were generally 18 to 21 years old, to the Phoenix Academy, an alternative school run by a for-profit provider focusing on "accelerated credit recovery" but which court papers say focused on seat time, stringent security measures, and a strict dress code. English-language learners at the academy take one English-as-a-second-language class but otherwise learn all their other subjects with the general population.

Pamela Davis Smith is the principal of Highland View Elementary in Bristol, Virginia. She writes, "When our students arrive Monday morning, many haven't eaten a real meal since they left school on Friday. Across Virginia, more than 300,000 children live in food-insecure households, meaning they don’t have reliable access to nutritionally adequate and safe food. Thanks to state and federal programs, we can provide all of our students with three no-cost meals at school and a weekend snackpack."

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is the ability to understand and manage one's emotions, "feel and show empathy for others," develop and keep positive relationships, and make good decisions. While the concept has been around since the 1960s, it is gaining new attention in education settings as a way to help children build resilience during the school years and beyond, manage stress, engage well with others, and gain confidence as learners. With schools now integrating SEL concepts into their strategic plans, all staff members, not just counselors or social workers, are finding ways to support them. School librarians, for instance, look for ways to use literature and other media resources to teach SEL ideas.

The new "question-of-the-week" is: What is the role, if any, of an ELL student's home language in the classroom? In Part One of this series, Melissa Eddington, Wendi Pillars, Tracey Flores, Sandy Ruvalcaba Carrillo, and Mary Ann Zehr offered their thoughts. You can listen to a 10-minute conversation I had with Melissa, Wendi and Tracey on my BAM! Radio Show. You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here. In Part 2, Rosa Isiah, Tan Huynh, Karen Nemeth, Sarah Thomas contribute their responses to the question.

What will happen in the wake of President Trump's immigration band and subsequent court rulings? Will Mr. Trump's immigration ban be allowed to stand? Will it be ruled illegal by the courts? Will it make America safer? Or will it do the opposite? Does it uphold America’s cherished values, or does it subvert them? These are some of the questions we encourage students to consider in this lesson plan.

Seeking to reassure parents concerned about President Donald Trump's immigration policies, City Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina sent home a letter Monday advising that the city and the Department of Education would protect the rights of every child enrolled in the public school system, regardless of  ethnic or religious background or family immigration status. The strongly-worded letter, also signed off by Commissioner Nisha Agarwal of the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, was translated into ten languages.