ELL News Headlines

Dan Santat and the late Jerry Pinkney draw from life (literally) in their memoirs for young readers.

Less than a third of undocumented students who apply for state financial aid in California for college enroll and receive the help, according to a new report from the California Student Aid Commission. Only 14% of the state’s more than 94,000 undocumented college students receive financial aid, the 2020-21 data shows.

When this school year began, Issac Moreno just couldn't get himself to go. During the pandemic, he'd gotten used to learning from his family's home in Los Angeles. Then, last fall, he started junior high, five days a week, in person. The last fully normal school year Issac remembers is third grade. Now, he's in seventh, with multiple classes each day, a busier schedule and new classmates. Issac's mother, Jessica Moreno, says it's been a struggle to get Issac back into the routine of going to school.

As New York City continues to grapple with youth mental health challenges, Mayor Eric Adams laid out a sweeping vision on Thursday to help schools better recognize student mental health needs and create a safety net for kids in crisis. 

English learners are one of the fastest growing student populations in the country, yet the number of specialized educators for them is lagging behind. The number of certified licensed English learner instructors decreased by about 10.4 percent between the 2018-19 and 2019-20 school years, according to the latest federal data available. The national English learner population grew by 2.6 percent in the same time period.

In a large room at St. Andrew’s United Church in downtown Halifax, a piano player pounds out the chorus to a Talking Heads song as a group of 30 people sing along. “If I’m going to sing the wrong note, I’m going to sing it confidently,” choir director Rachel Manko Lutz tells them. This is a lesson for choir singers, but also for English language learners – and almost everyone here is one.

In a high school gymnasium about 20 miles south of Phoenix, a room full of people shift in their seats. The space is silent, with every small creak echoing in the high rafters of the building. No one wants to be the first one to speak. Finally, a tall woman with dark hair stands up and walks to the microphone. She begins in English, but introduces herself in Tohono O'odham. "They call me April Ignacio and I am providing testimony on behalf of my family," she says. In her hands she holds a stack of papers that she reads from.

Social-emotional skills provide adolescents with valuable tools to navigate the tricky world of tweens and teens. But schools tend to focus much more on social-emotional learning in the preschool and elementary years than the latter grades.

West Contra Costa Unified science teacher Olaoluwalotobi “Tobi” Thomas is pursuing his lifelong dream of going to space, and in a way, he’s taking his students with him.