ELL News Headlines

Within minutes of casting her line into the bright green algae-covered waters of Powderhorn Lake, Arati watched her bobber lurch below the surface. Like everyone at the lake that day, Arati is new to the U.S. and Minnesota. She came to this fishing day through Nature for New Minnesotans, a pilot project developed by the University of Minnesota’s Extension services and a language class at Our Saviour’s Community Services English Learning Center.  

Alexandria "Lexi" Aniyah Rubio was looking forward to playing volleyball when she got to junior high. She dreamed of going to law school one day, and she loved astrology, butterflies, and the color yellow. (This report is also available in Spanish.)

Since the advent of the pandemic, enrollment decline has become a national trend for many school districts across the country. In Los Angeles Unified, the decline has been most apparent among our youngest learners in kindergarten — a 14% enrollment drop in 2020 and a 6% drop in 2021. There is evidence that a decline in kindergarten enrollment will contribute to a widening of the achievement gap between those who enroll and those who did not attend or were chronically absent in kindergarten. This is a preventable tragedy.

According to 2019 data, there are nearly 5.1 million English learners enrolled in public schools in this country, and that number has steadily increased in the past two decades. Many students are taken out of class and placed in separate ESL learning rooms. Often parents are faced with a choice that involves investing more in English language learning than their heritage language. It’s a common experience for recent immigrants to the U.S. or children of immigrants. 

Let’s look closely at the literacy work that can be done with comics and graphic novels in literacy instruction, particularly with upper elementary and middle grades students. While some strategies helpfully focus on work at the word level, these visual texts afford additional possibilities.

The new school year brings the end of universal free meals for many students. In 2020, Congress gave schools waivers to provide free breakfast and lunches regardless of income, but that expired at the start of September. Students and families still can apply for free meals if they meet income thresholds.

Swarmed after school by concerned Korean parents, Heejae Lim often found her mom acting as an unofficial liaison between her teachers and friends’ families who spoke little to no English. Lim, an education technology entrepreneur and TED Fellow, watched as her mother would answer questions every day about how to support their child’s learning, parent-teacher conferences and cultural barriers around school jargon. Growing up in an immigrant family, Lim resonated with their struggles and later explored solutions to family-school partnerships as the founder and CEO of TalkingPoints, a communication app that helps multilingual and underserved families connect with their child’s teachers.

Thanks to a new cultural exchange, city public schools are welcoming 25 new bilingual educators from the Dominican Republic this month.

More than 100 students in Lodi Unified School District spent part of the summer running relays and braiding jump-ropes from plastic bags, all while learning more complex writing and reading skills in English. This summer school program was designed to strengthen English language skills for elementary and middle school students who speak another language at home and have not yet mastered English. At the same time, it aimed to give the 16 teachers who participated the skills to support these students throughout the school year. The program, titled “The Prolific Plastic Pollution Problem,” focused on the history of plastic and the effects of plastic pollution.

Stamford schools usually see a large influx of students new to the country over the summer, and this season, one particular group has had a spike in numbers: Ukrainians.