ELL News Headlines

Forty years after Vincent Chin’s murder in Detroit, even amid a rise of anti-Asian American attacks in the past two years, his legacy is largely unfamiliar outside of – and sometimes even within – Asian American circles. Once they’re aware of the case, however, students are quick to make connections to the present day.

When Rosa Beltran was going through high school in the late ’90s in a small town in southern Colorado, she never expected to graduate. Beltran dropped out and became a teen mom. But she determined her children would finish school. “It was always instilled to me, I’m going to graduate, I’m going to go to college,” her oldest daughter Marisa, now 25, said. “There was no ifs, ands, or buts about it.”  Marisa Beltran graduated from Pueblo in 2015, during a decade when Colorado’s Hispanic graduation rate rose nearly 20 percentage points, double the gain for all students, and faster than for any other demographic. 

On a recent morning in teacher Geri Ross's classroom at Marion Elementary School, second graders sat at clusters of desks, singing songs and reading stories in Spanish. The students have spent the past school year in a pilot class that is testing bilingual education in the Ritenour School District. Just across the river in Illinois, schools are required to provide bilingual education in some classrooms. But Missouri schools have found it difficult to start similar programs. As educators search for ways to help students who were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, Ritenour leaders say its pilot class has had a hugely positive effect on students’ confidence and their test scores.

Former English learners — students who were once ELs, and shed that status when they mastered English — often emerge as high achievers, matching or surpassing their peers’ performance in school and on standardized tests, including the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, or MCAS.

In Albany High School’s AP calculus class sits the school’s valedictorian and salutatorian, who are both wrapping up the school year and are both English language learners. For Pyae Sone Hmine, this year’s valedictorian, the end of high school brings mixed emotions. He moved to the district in the midst of the pandemic, and only really got a taste of being inside an Albany classroom last September. Before coming to the Capital Region, Hmine and his family lived in Myanmar.Tonema Mitra, the class’s salutatorian, family moved to the United States from Bangladesh six years ago. "I'm really proud of that, honestly. I think that it's amazing to show how when you have the determination and the confidence to do something, you can actually do it," said Mitra.

Curiosity and creativity were on display when dozens of top teachers from around the U.S. gathered on the National Mall at the end of April. While reflecting on the state of their profession, each member of a trio of honorees expressed a variation of the following observation: Teachers are experts who deserve more trust.

Early in elementary school, many children already believe that boys are more interested than girls in computer science and engineering. That stereotype can impact girls’ willingness to participate in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) classes and activities, and even affect career choices down the road.