ELL News Headlines

Each morning, Stephanie Nichols gathers her second graders around a table to eat breakfast and start their day. As the kids unpack their knapsacks and settle into the classroom, Nichols likes to listen more than she speaks. But in recent weeks the table was buzzing about one thing: the mass shooting in Lewiston that left 18 people dead and 13 wounded. The event resulted in a multi-day search that closed schools and left the community on lockdown. Nichols teaches at Narragansett Elementary School in Gorham, Maine, about 40 minutes from Lewiston. "Even that far away, you know, we all have connections," she says. "It's Maine. It really is like the biggest small town."

Jill Moore's wheelchair doesn't prevent her from exploring parks, playgrounds and other public spaces. In fact, as an inclusive play specialist for Minnesota-based playground designer Landscape Structures, she's developed an expertise in noodling through landscapes that able-bodied people sometimes take for granted, searching for access opportunities and impediments designers might have overlooked, or as she puts it, "connecting the lived experience with the design."

Mattie and the Machine [Santa Monica Press], a debut novel by Lynn Ng Quezon, has been selected to receive the 2023 Grateful American Book Prize, according to co-founder David Bruce Smith.

Today’s K–12 classrooms are brimming with the use of technology. Students use computers and websites to access digital materials, work on projects and produce presentation materials, and take assessments, to cite a few examples. Alongside this widespread technological adoption, the growing linguistic and cultural diversity in classrooms has broadened the essential literacy skills required for students. Literacy skills extend beyond reading and writing printed texts and increasingly involve navigating varied communication styles in diverse contexts.

By reading books out loud every day, teachers introduce students to higher-level texts and new vocabulary, while modeling deeper thinking and strong discussion skills.

When Aaron Friedland was entering a master's program in economics at the University of British Columbia about a decade ago, he decided to research how the distance to school impacts attendance rates. So he spent two months living in a rural community in Uganda, regularly trekking with a group of kids who walked five miles each day round trip for their education.

Transportation to centers is one of the biggest barriers for families accessing Head Start programs, according to a survey from the National Head Start Association — distances that might be manageable for adults on their own can be insurmountable with a baby or toddler in tow. A new awareness campaign sponsored by the association, which represents Head Start providers, and a philanthropic group called the Civic Mapping Initiative, is hoping to ease that burden by encouraging local transit agencies to add bus stops closer to Head Start centers.

Names are one of the topics covered in We’re Gonna Keep on Talking, which elementary teacher Jennifer Orr co-authored with Philadelphia educator Matthew R. Kay. The book guides educators through how to foster meaningful conversations about race with elementary school students.

Missouri has become the latest state to face strong pushback against plans to promote social-emotional learning in its classrooms. The state was on track to adopt standards outlining the interpersonal, responsible decisionmaking, and problem-solving skills it expected K-12 students to master. But state education officials have decided to scale back and redefine the proposed social-emotional learning standards as a non-binding, optional framework after nearly 2,000 public comments on the plan revealed substantial confusion and concerns surrounding SEL.

The number of homeless students attending New York City schools reached a record high last year after thousands of asylum-seeking families entered the city’s shelter system, a new analysis shows.