ELL News Headlines

Raquel Martinez thinks a lot about time. The time of the day she schedules parent conferences. The time of year she holds open houses at Isaac Stevens Middle School, where she’s the principal. For her, time is essential to how she shows respect for the community her school serves. Many of her students’ parents are farmworkers — some of them migrant workers — who toil 12- to 14-hour days in apple orchards, and on cherry and potato farms in and around Pasco, Wash.

Subject-specific vocabulary goes hand-in-hand with a deep and meaningful knowledge of content. It allows us to engage with that subject, unlocks understanding, and promotes clear and precise communication. 

Middle and high schoolers juggle a lot between school, friends and family life. But an estimated one in five have even bigger responsibilities — they are also caregivers for their families, at a time when most U.S. schools do not formally identify or support caregiving students.

Author Meg Medina will be the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature for 2023-24, the Library of Congress (LOC) and Every Child a Reader recently announced. The 2019 Newbery Medal winner for Merci Suárez Changes Gears is Cuban-American and will become the first author of Latina heritage to serve in the role. Her platform will be "Cuéntame!: Let’s talk books," an idea inspired by the Spanish phrase that friends and families use when catching up with one another.

Update: For more on Meg Medina's tenure as the National Ambassador, see the following:

• Meg Medina Offers Office Hours as National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature
• Meg Medina: Let Kids Read Freely
• A Conversation with Meg Medina

If we want to create successful and lasting pathways, for all young people, into fields like science, technology, engineering and math, then our voices — and those of the millions of other young women like us— must be heard.

When Estela Juarez was 11, her video letter to then-President Donald Trump made headlines when it was shown at the 2020 Democratic National Convention. Estela wrote on behalf of her mother Alejandra, who had been deported to Mexico. Now 13, Estela has written (with Lissette Norman) a picture book for kids "Until Someone Listens" about her experiences and the importance of speaking up. Here & Now's Deepa Fernandes speaks with Estela Juarez about the book.

As schools across the city grapple with the mental health fallout of the pandemic, Chancellor David Banks indicated this week that the education department is in the process of introducing breathing exercises for all students.

Marlena Young-Jones started her English-as-a-second-language class the way she always does: asking everyone to share something they did over the weekend or after school. Playing Roblox on a tablet. Shopping with mom at Walmart. Getting a Happy Meal at McDonald’s. Pestering an older brother who recently arrived from Guatemala.  Young-Jones teaches at West Elementary, part of the Russellville City schools district in northern Alabama. She works specifically with students classified as English learners, most of whom are native speakers of Spanish. She helps them master both conversational and academic English with instruction that builds off general classroom lessons.

Elizabeth Alonzo moved to Russellville, Ala. when she was in the 7th grade. She currently works as an English-learner aide at West Elementary primarily in 2nd grade classrooms. She is one of 10 new aides the Russellville city schools district hired to support the growing population of English learners. But the funding for these positions will run out in May 2024, since they are part of the district’s federal pandemic relief spending. A former English learner herself, Alonzo shares details of her work, the courses she’s taking to become a full-fledged teacher, and why support for English learners matters.