ELL News Headlines
Throughout the week, Colorín Colorado gathers news headlines related to English language learners from around the country. The ELL Headlines are posted Monday through Friday and are available for free!
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From the archives: A heat wave, and lack of air conditioning, disrupt school districts nationwide
Big city districts like Baltimore, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh often have old school buildings that can't handle AC for one reason or another. In many cases, they try to find workarounds for a handful of hot days each year.
Commentary: NY is poised to phase out Regents exam requirements. For English learners, especially, it’s past time.
Sunisa Nuonsy is a Lao-American educator and scholar based in Brooklyn. She is a doctoral student at the CUNY Graduate Center and a project researcher for the CUNY Initiative on Immigration and Education. In this opinion piece, she writes, "For marginalized students, especially recent immigrants doing the double duty of learning content and a new language, a standardized approach can be exclusive and an inaccurate assessment."
Favorite Lessons From Teachers for English-Learner Newcomers
Today’s post is the latest in a series sharing teachers’ favorite lessons for English- language-learner newcomers.
This Newark educator missed out on support as a new immigrant. Years on, she became the teacher she needed.
For Lina Zapata, becoming a teacher was an early calling that stemmed from her own struggles learning English in New York schools. A Colombian native, Zapata immigrated to the United States with her mom when she was 12. She remembers the challenges they faced in navigating the public school system, often without needed support. But those experiences have shaped Zapata into the kind of teacher she needed when she was young.
Kindergartners are missing a lot of school. This district has a fix
In many K-12 schools across the country, an alarming number of children have been chronically absent – an old problem that COVID-19 made much, much worse. In California, more than 1 in 3 kindergartners was chronically absent. But the tiny town of Livingston, in California’s sprawling Central Valley, is an outlier – and a powerful lesson in the ways a district can proactively prevent wide-scale absenteeism.
A small rural town needed more Spanish-language child care. Here’s what it took
In Lexington, Nebraska, where two-thirds of residents are Hispanic, hundreds of children lack access to high-quality child care from providers who can communicate with their parents. Something had to change.
36 Exceptional Titles, Including 7 Spanish Language Books and a Celebration with Raúl the Third
This collection of reviews from School Library Journal features a wide range of titles, including Spanish-language titles and books about different celebrations.
Most NYC high schools don’t have a student newspaper. Teachers can help change that.
Teacher John Downes-Angus writes, "I was hired to teach AP English Language to juniors and English to seniors. About a month after I was offered this job, though, my principal asked me if I’d teach a year-long journalism class." It's been huge learning curve for him, but well worth it: "This is not my most organized or efficient class, but figuring out how to teach it for the past two years has been some of the most fun I’ve had in my 10 years working as a teacher here in New York City," he says.
What All Teachers Should Know About WIDA’s Test for English Learners
Schools are required to test the progress of their English learners each year to determine whether they still need language instruction services or can exit out of such programs. In close to 40 states, that test is known as the WIDA ACCESS test.
Immigrants are vastly underrepresented in elected office. This program is trying to change that
New American Leaders is a national nonprofit nonpartisan organization dedicated to training immigrants, refugees, and second generation Americans to run for office and manage campaigns. It provides the necessary resources so they can step into their own political power, NAL CEO and president Ghida Dagher said. The first thing that NAL does is ask participants to embrace their immigrant heritage as part of their new American background, rather than shy away from it.