ELL News Headlines

By creating ways for families to feel welcome and included, administrators can strengthen the relationship between home and school.

The National Book Foundation has announced the longlist for the 2024 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. The list includes books by Margarita Engle, Erin Entrada Kelly, and Violet Duncan (Cree and Taino).

Tuesday night’s presidential debate directed more attention to an Ohio city that has grown in recent years with the arrival of newcomers from Haiti. That growth in Springfield, Ohio, has not only spurred local population growth and economic development, but also enrollment growth for the local school district.

The small Georgia community has been welcoming growing numbers of immigrants, who now are living in the wake of America’s latest deadly school shooting.

Cristina Irimie's mother was at home in her tiny Romanian village last week when she heard church bells tolling, a sign that a member of the community had died. The bells, she soon learned, were in honor of her own daughter, a math teacher at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia. Cristina Irimie was gunned down Wednesday − one of four people killed in last week's shooting for which a 14-year-old faces murder changes.

On the day she died, Cristina Irimie brought in desserts and other treats that she had baked for her math students at Apalachee High School to celebrate her 52nd birthday, which came on Aug. 24. By day’s end at the school in Winder, Ga., that typically kind gesture seemed like a thought from another world after a 14-year-old student shot and killed Ms. Irimie and three others in the deadliest episode of school violence in Georgia history. Also killed were Richard Aspinwall, 39, a math teacher who was also the school football team’s defensive coordinator, and two 14-year-old students, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo.

Throughout rural America, non-native English speakers are less likely than their urban peers to get proper support in school, sometimes leading to a lifetime of lower educational attainment. But some rural schools are developing multilingual education strategies to rival those found in urban and suburban districts.

Dual language immersion programs — found to significantly raise student achievement in core subjects for English learners — continue to grow in popularity nationwide. Last year, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona pushed for dual language education and called for more investments in multilingualism in schools. 

Two Illinois State University students recently visited the town of San Sebastián del Monte, a small community in southern Mexico, to produce a documentary film focused on the preservation of the Indigenous language Mixtec.

To increase interest in reading, teachers can guide students to explore a variety of literacy approaches that support their development.