ELL News Headlines

The border guard steps over to the car and asks the woman inside to declare her citizenship. "Blackfoot," she responds. Thus begins the impasse that defines Borders, a graphic novel adapted by Natasha Donovan from the short story by Thomas King. The narrator and his mother are traveling from Canada to the United States. When the mother refuses to declare any citizenship other than Blackfoot, the Americans turn her away, and when she returns to the Canadian border post, the same thing happens. She and her young son are trapped in the gray area between borders. The story is a meditation on citizenship and nationality, as well as a testament to the fact that before any European set foot in North America, hundreds of sovereign nations stretched from coast to coast — sovereign nations that still exist. Borders is one of a growing number of graphic novels by and about Native people depicting a wide range of experiences and cultures.

A first-of-its-kind study from the University of Kansas (KU), examining three key cognitive functions and their role in learning to write, suggests that insufficient focus on bilingual education has hindered the progress of Hispanic English learners (ELs).

Mandy Smoker Broaddus is a practice expert in Native education at Education Northwest, which provides education support services to schools, districts, and communities. She’s also a member of the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Reservation in Montana. Through her work, she provides technical assistance and professional development in schools, tribal colleges, and at the state level. Here, she outlines the importance of culturally responsive teaching for all students.

Communicating with families is key to helping students thrive – and that’s become even more apparent during a pandemic that’s upended student well-being and forced constant logistical changes in schools. Educators should pay particular attention to the needs of parents who speak a language other than English at home, ensuring they stay informed and feel comfortable engaging in the school setting. In this webinar on Nov. 30 at 2pm ET, we’ll discuss concrete ways schools and districts can improve communication with families of English-language learners, including through alternate staffing approaches and smart use of technology.

'Last Night at the Telegraph Club' by Malinda Lo has won the 2021 National Book Award 2021 for Young People's Literature. The novel is set in the 1950s and follows the journey of seventeen-year-old Lily Hu as she falls in love with another young woman, set against Red-Scare paranoia.

Floaters, Martín Espada's collection of poems that explore bigotry, protests and love, is the 2021 winner of the National Book Award in poetry. The title poem draws on a tragedy: the deaths of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, 25, and his young daughter, Angie Valeria, whose bodies were found in the water along the Rio Grande.

Aryan Ashory, a young Afghan poet, left her country a few years ago with her family for security reasons. Aryan now lives in a refugee settlement in Germany, and shared her thoughts and writing with the NewsHour's Student Reporting Lab as part of their arts and culture series, CANVAS.

Equity in education is the personalized assurance that all students receive the resources they need to thrive in the academic setting. One way to do that in a class with English language learners, or multilingual students, is to leverage culturally sustaining practices, which stem from the belief that multilingual learners possess a diverse array of experiences and skills that contribute to the dynamics of the learning environment and their own academic success.

Working from drawings by pre-kindergarten students at Jere Whitson Elementary School in Cookeville, Tenn., Cindy Putman of WCTE is preparing for the unveiling of a mural-painting project inspired by Alma’s Way, the new PBS Kids series from Fred Rogers Productions.

As the numbers of English learners continue to rise in U.S. schools, the need also rises for schools and districts to increase the number of qualified (content and pedagogically proficient), culturally competent, and credentialed teachers prepared to teach them.