ELL News Headlines

The Arizona Department of Education announced Thursday its award of $10 million for an English Language Learners program through a collaboration with nonprofit WestEd.The targeted funding will go  toward WestEd’s Quality Teaching for English Learners, which will implement rigorous, generative instruction for students to accelerate learning, according to a press release.

Although college graduation and degree attainment rates are among the highest in the state for Asian American Californians, the same can’t be said for Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders in California.  The vast diversity of the racial groups can hide that Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders in California have lower admission rates into the University of California and Asian Americans have low transfer rates from the California Community Colleges, according to a report released today by the Campaign for College Opportunity, a nonprofit research organization. 

For two years, the COVID pandemic meant that the nonprofit Dancing Classrooms, which offers lessons at schools across New York City, had to figure out how to teach students how to waltz, swing, and rumba without touching their partners or even coming within three feet of one another. But about a month after the mandate to wear masks in schools ended in March, also marking the end of social distancing requirements, the nonprofit decided it was time for students to once again take each other by the hand.

A group of students as young as kindergarteners is learning core elementary subjects fully in Spanish. The program has been happening for eight years at Lyseth Elementary School in Portland. Lenore Williams, school principal, said one of the goals of the program is to set students up for success by learning a second language from a very early age.

This summer, the littlest learners will start at Manual High School. What were once administrative offices have been turned into classrooms for infants and toddlers, outfitted with cribs, changing tables, and tiny chairs. A small auditorium has been divided and converted into preschool classrooms filled with new toys. A new Day Early Learning child care center is opening in a wing of the high school, hoping to serve 80 children ages 0-5 on Indianapolis’ south side.

Reeling from the horrific mass shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Tex., literacy specialist Kylene Beers took action from her perspective as an teacher and Texan. She emailed four friends to help process the devastating situation: former Young People’s Poet Laureate Naomi Shihab Nye, Newbery Medalist Matt de la Peña, novelist and retired therapist Chris Crutcher, and Book Love Foundation president Penny Kittle. They swiftly coordinated a free panel in support of heartbroken teachers, “Words Can Help Heal: Helping You and Students Through Trauma.”

The hardest part of putting together a roundup of graphic novels by AAPI creators is choosing from the wide variety available. Here are 10 recent and upcoming titles across a range of genres and styles.

These suggestions, updated in wake of this week's shooting in Uvalde, TX, for provide guidance on how to talk about school violence or violence in a community, discuss events in the news, and help children feel safe in their environment.

Shellyara Maymi Hinojosa describes her favorite class as a safe space that makes her feel at home, even though the class is often filled with students speaking foreign languages.Hinojosa, a freshman at Sycamore High School, attends an English Language Learner (ELL) class taught by Claribel Robles. Hinojosa, whose mom is Puerto Rican and dad is Mexican, speaks Spanish at home.