ELL News Headlines

Several years ago, officials at Pathways, an Alabama-based nonprofit that provides services and shelter for women and children who are homeless, learned that their clients needed more than a safe, temporary home: They needed child care, too.

Nowruz, commonly known as the Persian New Year, symbolizes revival and renewal for its more than 300 million celebrants in modern-day Iran and beyond.

Mari Monroe is a high school teacher in San Diego, and also a yoga instructor. When she started to incorporate elements around mindfulness from her yoga practice into the classroom, she realized her students were eager for that type of instruction. Here, she explains how she teaches and incorporates mindfulness through daily lessons she’s dubbed the ‘Mindful Minute,’ and offers advice for teachers looking to do the same, regardless of their familiarity with the topic.

Both four-year universities and community colleges could have a significant role to play in the critical work of providing better access to quality English instruction. But to do so, they must reimagine what English language learning looks like inside and outside their classrooms. It’s imperative that they create personalized, career-focused educational opportunities designed around the needs of all English learners — newcomers as well as those who’ve been living and working in the U.S. for years — and the labor market.

A new tutoring model, which gives very short one-to-one tutoring sessions to young children who are just learning to read, is showing some promising results. The nonprofit organization, Chapter One (formerly Innovations for Learning), calls it “short-burst” tutoring. It involves far fewer tutors, less disruption to school schedules and no extra space beyond a desk in the back of a classroom. The price tag, paid by school districts, is less than $500 per student.

Kenny Lake School in Copper Center, Alaska, is small, with about 60 students from kindergarten to high school seniors. It's even smaller in winter when some parents homeschool their children because of the long drives and slick roads. Jennifer Hodges is a third, fourth and fifth grade teacher. She says her three-grade class sits only at desks for 20 minutes a day. They do a lot of practical learning, such as raising Coho salmon from egg to Alevin to fry then releasing them into a lake. Every day, about a third of Hodges' students ride the bus 45 minutes from the Native Village of Chitina. Many students already have experience fishing salmon, which is a staple in Native Alaskan communities.

Teen Mental Health First Aid is adapted from Youth Mental Health First Aid, a training designed for adults who work with or care for teens. The latter program was developed about two decades ago in Australia, and has been taught in the United States since 2008. The benefits of both programs are supported by peer-reviewed scientific studies. In teens, the training has been shown to increase mental health literacy and reduce reported psychological distress. In one randomized controlled trial, teens reported a significantly higher level of confidence in helping a friend who was anxious or suicidal, lower stigma around mental illness, and were more likely to choose the correct, helpful course of action.

As a young girl living in Guyana, Nubia Lumumba used to recruit kids in her neighborhood for her makeshift school in her backyard. For the past eight years, she has had a classroom of her own, and the Newark educator brings to it a deep level of empathy and compassion for her students.

The annual Iditarod sled dog race came to a historic finish in Nome, Alaska, on Tuesday. For the first time all top-three finishers claim Alaska Native heritage.

Narrowing Down to Find Common Ground: Shared Agreements for Effective Literacy Instruction in California is a new working paper released by Pivot Learning that reflects collective consensus on key topics concerning (1) literacy and multilingual and English learner students; (2) early screening and assessment; and (3) foundational skills among a group of literacy experts.