ELL News Headlines

Feeling like part of a larger classroom community improves students’ grades and their self-confidence.

The laborious process of tracing out our thoughts, letter by letter, on the page is becoming a relic of the past in our screen-dominated world, but giving up this slower, more tactile way of expressing ourselves may come at a significant cost, according to a growing body of research that’s uncovering the surprising cognitive benefits of taking pen to paper, or even stylus to iPad — for both children and adults.

From graphic novels centering underrepresented perspectives to charming rom-coms and nonfiction about climate change, these summer reading selections will inspire young adults to make positive change in their communities — and themselves.

Amid a nationwide literacy crisis, New Mexico stands out for its dead last ranking in reading performance on the federally administered nation’s report card. Arsenio Romero has been New Mexico’s secretary of education only since last year. But he has ambitious plans to work on turning around his state’s literacy reputation, and he wants to do it fast—including a big push this summer.

No doubt, books and empathy go hand-in-hand or, in this case, ear-to-ear. In a climate of contagious divisiveness, acknowledging and accepting all manner of differences is paramount to being good citizens and, most importantly, good people. For both May’s Asian Pacific American Heritage Month and beyond, consider lining shelves and adding to TBR piles with some of these edifying, entertaining 2024 choices.

The winner of this year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee has been crowned. Bruhat Soma, a 12-year-old from Florida, bested the competition Thursday with his spelling of “abseil,” a word used to describe descending a vertical surface area with a rope attached to one’s body.

When migrant families began arriving two years ago, Hudson Guild, a long-time preschool operator on Manhattan’s West Side, became a popular child care choice for those staying in nearby emergency shelters. The operator had plenty of open seats because of prekindergarten enrollment losses during the pandemic, and it ran several publicly funded preschool programs that were free and open to undocumented families. Before long, as many as 70% of the seats in some of Hudson Guild’s programs were occupied by the newcomer students, according to administrators. “It was a great partnership, because we were able to offer safe, nurturing educational classrooms,” said Joanny Ruiz, the director of early childhood services at Hudson Guild. “Parents were really appreciative and open to the work that we were doing.” But that arrangement was upended when a new city rule limiting shelter stays for migrant families to 60 days began to take effect, Ruiz said. As many as 50 of Hudson Guild’s roughly 200 families have dropped out over the past several months, while others are now making long daily commutes and struggling to keep up their attendance, she said.

Following the release of a report that revealed “serious barriers” for Latino students in Denver Public Schools, the district has hired its first director of Latinx Student Success.

After Brown v. Board, white families pulled their kids out of Pasadena, California’s public schools. Decades have passed, and neighborhood parents are still working toward integration.

Only about half of teen mothers earn a high school diploma by age 22, compared to 90 percent of female students who did not have a child as a teenager. There are many factors at play, but the most significant one is that traditional high schools don’t accommodate our needs.