ELL News Headlines

A new series from The Hechinger Report looks at the benefits of play for preschool students, elementary students, and middle school students.

We obviously can’t talk to our past selves. However, what we would say to ourselves if we could can probably serve as good advice to new teachers.

Boston Public Schools refers a disproportionate number of Black and Latino boys and English language learners to special education, increasing the likelihood they will be placed in separate environments that restrict their access to educational opportunities, a new report concludes.

An effort to improve bilingual education — a longstanding challenge for the city’s public schools — was dealt a blow this weekend when allegations surfaced that some bilingual teachers from the Dominican Republic were being forced to hand over most of their paychecks to cover inflated rents charged by their bosses.

Teacher Leticia Denoya stands at the front of her classroom, at Natchaug Elementary in Windham, Conn. Her first-graders sit criss-cross applesauce on the reading rug. "Do you remember last week, we worked with our puppets and we learned a new strategy?" One little girl raises her hand: "Belly-breathing."

Better data collection and resources for schools serving “newcomers” — students who are new to the U.S and who may or may not speak English — are being planned, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of English Language Acquisition said in a recent letter to a leader of a coalition of educators, researchers and advocacy organizations.

Michele Bergeron knows that her 5-year-old son, who’s deaf, likes watermelon and pizza. He’s obsessed with airplanes, wants to play football, likes books about Spider-Man and someday wants to be tall like his dad. Her son, Lennon, attends California School for the Deaf in Fremont, a public K-12 school for deaf and hard-of-hearing students from throughout Northern California. Students as young as 14 months learn to sign at the same time they learn to read and write in English, which allows them to master both languages and communicate with their deaf peers and the hearing world alike.

A severe teacher shortage has forced dozens of preschools in California to shut down some of their classrooms since the start of the school year. The funding for these subsidized classrooms is available, and plenty of children from lower-income families are waiting to enroll. But there aren’t enough teachers — a situation that could get worse as the state begins to pour billions of dollars into transitional kindergarten, threatening to destabilize the early education workforce.

There are 574 federally recognized Indian tribes in the contiguous 48 states and Alaska and more than 600 tribes in Canada, including First Nations People, Métis, and Inuit. In Canada and the United States alone, over a thousand languages are spoken. Each band has its own identity, customs, and stories. The following compilations offer an inside look into some of these Indigenous peoples and their rich and varied cultures. Many of these anthologies present fictional stories inspired by the creators’ backgrounds, but others are true tales handed down through generations. Others are collective biographies of important Native American figures everyone should know. Gathered from northernmost Canada to the Mayan of Central America, these works are only a selection of the stories that exist within the Native community. They take place in the past, but also the future, to emphasize that Native peoples have been, are still, and will always be an active and indelible part our complex story.

It’s been clear to Richmond High School junior Angelee Montances that when it comes to arts and music education, all things are not created equal in Richmond.