ELL News Headlines

Teachers in the third-largest U.S. school district are expected to go on strike Thursday for the first time in seven years after contract negotiations between the Chicago Teachers Union and city officials hit a stalemate Tuesday night. Along with familiar issues such as contract length, benefits and class sizes, one of the core demands of the teachers union is not explicitly about their work environment but rather community justice: access to affordable housing.

Gumbo. Chile con queso. California roll. Spaghetti and meatballs. The names are as familiar as household brands. Yet how much do you know about these dishes? Based on the names alone, with their roots in other languages and other cultures, each dish sounds like an import. In some ways, they are. But each dish also morphed and adapted to its new environment, transforming into something uniquely American.

Hundreds of community members and local leaders gathered Tuesday at Gaithersburg High School to highlight inequities in MCPS education. And they have a plan to address the issue. The newly formed Black and Brown Coalition for Educational Equity and Excellence organized the forum following recent reports to the Montgomery County Board of Education showing that students of color are more likely to be taught by teachers with less experience.

Immigrant parents worry their children will struggle with reading and fret that as non-English speakers, they can't help. A new study shows that's simply not true. Reading to a young child in any language will likely help them learn to read in English.

With the Maryland suburbs becoming increasingly diverse, advocates for black and Hispanic students have joined forces to call attention to inequity in the state’s largest school system and to push for changes. They cite a recent study showing that students of color, particularly those from low-income families, are more likely to be taught by novice teachers in Montgomery County and that schools with more children from low-income families are more likely to have novice principals.

In the early 1990s, when Dr. Michelle Martin was in graduate school, she wrote papers about wilderness-survival stories for kids. Over time, Martin began to notice something: Of all the picture books about children exploring the wild outdoors for fun, only a scarce few feature African American kids as protagonists. Martin hopes that drawing attention to this particular vacuum within children’s literature will help encourage authors and illustrators to fill it. But taking note of that particular gap in children’s literature, and its potentially detrimental side effects, is the easy part. Understanding why the gap exists is a much more complicated pursuit.

By the 1980s, fewer than 50 Hawaiians under age 18 could speak their language. A handful of second-language speakers took it upon themselves to start a school where everything is taught in Hawaiian.

Introducing math and science through inquiry and problem-based instruction can pay off throughout elementary school, according to a massive international series of studies. The findings come as more schools in the United States and throughout the Americas explore problem- and inquiry-based programs, particularly in science and math. These are the largest-scale randomized trials on the approach, and the first to look at preschool students as well as those in elementary grades.

NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with Shea Serrano, author of Movies (And Other Things) about his love for the big screen, family and Mexican American roots. His last book, "Basketball (And Other Things)," was a No. 1 New York Times bestseller and praised by President Barack Obama.

A federal judge in New York has issued a temporary injunction against the Trump administration's "public charge" rule, preventing the rule from taking effect on Oct. 15. The controversial rule would make it more difficult for immigrants to get green cards if it looks like they might need public assistance. Titled "Inadmissibility on Public Charge Grounds," the rule sparked several legal challenges.