ELL News Headlines

A blog, no matter what its subject, no matter how large or small its reach, is a platform. You use it to make your thoughts and feelings known. What can a white librarian do to help, even a little, when injustice is so blatant? You can be an ally. You can work to actually actively fight racism when you hear it, see it, and you can acknowledge it. You can listen. Project Ready, a free online professional development curriculum by UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science (and that my library has been using to regularly educate its employees), created a rundown of what allyship entails. Yesterday, I was asked to create a booklist for my city’s patrons of some antiracist titles. I was immediately helped by about eight of my colleagues and, together, we created the following list of links. Please use this where it is most needed.

Best-selling YA author Jason Reynolds has grappled with racism personally and in his writing. The National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature also recently co-authored a book for young people on fighting racism: Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You. We’ve asked Jason Reynolds to join Kojo For Kids to help us understand what has led to the tensions we’ve seen over the last week, and to talk about why racism persists and what we can do to build a less racist society.

Since their beginning in 1967, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards celebrate notable titles in children’s books, middle grade and young adult novels. The books are sorted into the categories of picture books, fiction and poetry and nonfiction, and then reviewed by a panel of three judges. This year, the judges were Sujei Lugo, Leo Landry and Julie Danielson. In its first-ever virtual ceremony, Roger Sutton, editor-in-chief of Horn Book, announced the award-winning titles and honor recipients in each category.

For the first three weeks that Alba Avila delivered virtual Zoom lessons, only four out of her 15 of English learner (EL) students had the technology needed to participate—the rest got hard copy packets. When her district finally purchased and distributed Chromebooks for families in need, Avila, a fourth grade dual language teacher in San Antonio, was tasked with getting students online. Like Avila, teachers and school leaders across the country made the herculean move to remote learning in response to COVID-19 with no time to prepare and little federal guidance. Published two months after this frantic transition, new guidance from the U.S. Department of Education (ED) aims to clarify what schools and teachers should be doing to fulfill their responsibility to the country's nearly five million EL students during school closures. Federal officials say schools and educators must provide “meaningful access” to remote learning during school closures, but they give schools the flexibility to determine how to provide access to these learning opportunities.

Four out of 10 of the poorest U.S. students are accessing remote learning as little as once a week or less, according to a new survey from ParentsTogether, an advocacy group. By contrast, for families making more than $100,000 a year, 83% of kids are doing distance learning every day, with the majority engaged over two hours a day, the survey found. From the beginning, experts in distance learning warned that it can magnify inequities, with the most able and highly advantaged learners humming along while learners who need more support fall far behind.

The new question-of-the-week is: What are ways to make lessons more "relevant" to students' lives? Shawn Wooton and Dawn Mitchell from Spartanburg School District in South Carolina write about culturally inclusive practices that add relevance to instruction. Kevin Parr, a 1st grade teacher from Wenatchee, Washington suggests that teachers find relevance via "small things," for example, responding to a student's writing with personal comments related to the student's story (not only the style and mechanics) can help make learning more relevant. Michael Haggen, chief academic officer for Scholastic Education, says that relevance = engagement and to provide access to high-quality authentic texts. Keisha Rembert, an 8th grade English and U.S. history teacher at Clifford Crone Middle School in Naperville, Illinois, suggests bringing in students as co-teachers. Find more suggestions in this blog post hosted by Larry Ferlazzo.

My dear high school class of 2020: Oh, where do we even begin? First, I want to say how much I love and adore you. I’ve known many of you since you were 12 years old, bouncing around my 7th grade classroom, reading, thinking, and laughing with me. You indulged me when I made funny voices during read alouds and participated when I made you go outside to try the “Unity clap” we learned about in a lesson on the United Farm Workers strike. I was so happy that our small school meant I got to teach you as 9th graders as well. I loved watching you grow once you moved on and become the marvelous young adults you are today. You made me so happy to be back in the classroom with you. You reminded me then (and now) why I love being a teacher.

Researchers have found that one key way to encourage intrinsic motivation to learn is by making classroom lessons relevant to students' lives. This element is constant—whether we're doing remote teaching or are with students in our physical classrooms (you can see this video we made showing specific ways to apply it in distance learning). This six-part series will share multiple strategies to put this concept into practice. The series is "kicked off" with responses from Blanca Huertas, Marcy Webb, Anabel Gonzalez, Cheryl Abla, Maurice McDavid, and Nadine Sanchez.

As we continue to adjust to this new virtual learning environment, success will depend, to a large extent, on whether we can shift our focus from tactical to strategic. And there is nothing more strategic than school climate. You may feel like you have too much on your plate to worry about school climate right now. But the truth is, school climate is the plate. More than 25 years of research tells us that the climate of a school matters; it literally guides how well almost everything gets done. Positive school climates are characterized by psychological and physical safety, where students feel comfortable expressing themselves, asking questions and taking risks, and educators are free to raise ideas or try new techniques. Having a positive school climate means practicing collaborative decision-making to ensure students’ and teachers’ voices are heard, building connections with the community, delivering excellent academic instruction and supporting the well-being of both staff and students.