ELL News Headlines

Students were not allowed to speak Spanish at school. That was the rule that teachers instituted at a small West Texas schoolhouse near the United States-Mexico border in the 1950s, even though Spanish was the native language for many of the Mexican-American children there. The Blackwell School in tiny Marfa, Texas, was just one of many segregated schools across the southwest where Hispanic children were taught separately from their white peers. Now, the old adobe building is set to become a national historic site that supporters say will explore the often untold story of how school segregation played out in this corner of the U.S. The moment is the culmination of years of work by Blackwell alumni to preserve the school's history and to obtain formal recognitions for the site.

Teaching current events isn’t just for social studies. From exploring how the coronavirus vaccine works to studying how wildfires affect communities, it’s increasingly a focus in science, too.

Tonya Bolden and Eric Velasquez have recently collaborated on Going Places, a nonfiction picture book about the Green Book, a travel guide written and published by a Black postal worker who wanted African Americans to stay safe while traveling around the U.S. during segregation. We asked the duo to discuss the genesis of their new book, the history behind the Green Book, and why it’s still relevant today.

Every day at Concord High School, Emily Francis teaches students how to learn English while connecting to experiences they have lived through. Many of the students she teaches immigrated to the United States at a young age and live with families who don't speak English, creating few opportunities for them to learn the language. That's where Francis comes in as an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher to help students learn English to succeed in their future lives. Being in the United States not knowing English is a struggle Francis went through herself.

This is the second post in a three-part series from Larry Ferlazzo. You can see Part One here.

A team of Neag School of Education researchers is developing a new initiative designed to help educators overcome language barriers to identify gifted students among English learners.

Immigrant students — whether they are refugees, unaccompanied minors, or migrants — are becoming increasingly visible in K-12 schools across the country as immigration topics dominate headlines.

Philadelphia celebrated the end of “Welcoming Week” by honoring city workers and community advocates who help immigrants, refugees, and others figure out how to make the city their new home.

Welcome centers with staff that reflect the culture and speak the languages of immigrant students and families. Bus tours of the school district’s neighborhoods. Even assisting in international evacuations of students.

Jennifer Founds had an eighth grade student who was always hanging out in the hallways when he was supposed to be in class at Martin Luther King Jr. Academic Middle School (MLK) in San Francisco. She considered him to be one of her more challenging students, but when the class started a unit to see which student could build the most supportive bridge for a competition, he willingly showed up. “So we were like, ‘OK, this is something we really need to build on,’” Founds said. “They [came] to class when they felt that the work was hands-on, meaningful and interesting.”