ELL News Headlines

Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa lives in a high rise apartment with a view of the Hudson River in the Bronx, New York. Her apartment is surrounded by shelves of books, pens, statues, and artwork that remind her of her ancestors and characters of her own books. After a long career as a school teacher and librarian, she has been on a mission to tell stories of the Black experience in Puerto Rico. On April 12th, 2022 she published her second novel, "A Woman of Endurance," which centers on Pola, an enslaved woman in 19th century Puerto Rico. 

When he's not working shifts as a custodian at Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Luis M. Toribio — a native Spanish speaker — takes classes on the weekends through Harvard to hone his English skills and practice pronunciation. Toribio is one of many Harvard workers who take classes through the Bridge Program, a University-run Adult Learning Center that provides English as a Second Language classes, career development workshops, an adult diploma program, and citizenship classes.

Technology donations are giving a boost to a nonprofit organization that provides education programs for Hispanic residents in northeast Mississippi. El Centro, in Tupelo, is receiving three years of free internet access and a $50,000 grant from AT&T and 15 computers from Dell Technologies, the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reported.

The Keres Children’s Learning Center lies in the heart of the Pueblo de Cochiti, a 40-minute drive southwest of Santa Fe, serving 14 students of mixed ages in early childhood and elementary classrooms. The oldest – a 12-year-old boy – serves as an informal mentor and example to the younger children. The nonprofit school is funded largely by private charitable foundations, in addition to a federal Esther Martinez language immersion grant, named after the late Tewa language preservationist and linguist from Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo.

As Taliban forces took over Afghanistan and closed in on the capital, Kabul, last summer, thousands of Afghans desperately sought refuge in the United States. Many came to the Pacific Northwest to join relatives already here, and more than 3,000 have arrived since the upheaval in September alone.

There is a growing body of evidence about the disproportionate impact the pandemic had on English learners (ELs). We sought to capture the complexity of learning conditions for this student population during the COVID-19 pandemic by interviewing 20 EL education leaders. These experts’ experiences revealed that while remote learning posed significant challenges to EL education and services, educators improvised, collaborated, and continued to innovate throughout the pandemic. To help EL students moving forward, education leaders on all levels must acknowledge both the struggle and perseverance that shaped their educational experiences during the pandemic.

A number of Manitoba schools offering English-Ukrainian bilingual education are preparing to welcome Ukrainian students fleeing the war. Paulette Monita, president of Manitoba Parents for Ukrainian Education, told Global News the bilingual program is being offered at 11 schools in six divisions across the province — and that due to Manitoba’s significant Ukrainian population, it’s expected a number of families will settle in the province.

Horse country has room for everyone—that’s the animating belief that drives the new Horse Country middle grade series by Yamile Saied Méndez. The central protagonists are two sixth-grade girls who each have a Latinx father and white mother, but come from very different economic backgrounds: Carolina Aguasvivas has grown up on the Idaho ranch that her father manages, and Chelsie Sanchez, whose mother, the ranch’s new owner, has ambitious plans for its future.

Dean Bridget Long has announced that Carola Suárez-Orozco will join the faculty at the Harvard Graduate School of Education as a professor in residence. She is currently a distinguished professor of counseling and school psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and co-founder and chair of the board of directors of ReImagining Migration, an independent nonprofit focused on advancing the education and wellbeing of immigrant-origin youth. She will begin her position at HGSE on July 1, 2022.

When the leaders of University Prep Charter High School learned that a freshman was shot and killed Friday afternoon a few blocks away from campus, they didn’t wait until school resumed to give students and staff a space to grieve. On Saturday morning, they opened the South Bronx school’s doors to students, staff, or parents who wanted to talk to a counselor or share memories of 16-year-old Angellyh Yambo.