Many U.S. schools now have adolescent students who are recent immigrants arrive throughout the school year--sometimes with little English or having had interrupted formal education in their home country. Teachers need strategies to involve such "newcomer" students in classroom work right away. The author describes a framework of…

The Migration Policy Institute has produced a set of fact sheets providing a sketch of key characteristics of the foreign-born and English Learner (EL) populations in select states. The fact sheets are intended to equip community organizations, policymakers, and others with an understanding of the state demographic context and some of the basics…

This article takes readers along the pathway of language learning and disorders across childhood and adolescence, highlighting the complex relationship between early (preschool) language disorders and later (school age) learning disabilities. The discussion starts with a review of diagnostic labels widely used in schools and other professional…

Programs to help middle school students deal with racism and hate have been in place for some years, yet almost monthly we hear of students committing suicide or killing other students due to issues of isolation or harassment. Within the confines of a safe classroom, doctoral students in Educational Leadership addressed issues of stereotypes and…

Teens write all the time: They post messages to social networks; they chat via instant message (IM); they communicate by text. In all of these digital spaces, they write. However, the language that they use in these venues often does not follow the rules of standard written English (SWE). They experiment with language, manipulating SWE in ways…

Susana Dutro and Ellen Levy are leaders of E.L. Achieve, an organization dedicated to assisting educators in equipping English learners for academic achievement. They see adolescent English learners regularly confronting the challenge of developing the language needed to fully participate in middle and high school classrooms. Their approach to…

The fastest-growing student population in U.S. schools today is children of immigrants, half of whom do not speak English fluently and are thus labeled English learners. Although the federal government requires school districts to provide services to English learners, it offers states no policies to follow in identifying, assessing, placing, or…

Strength-based cultural considerations for counseling Latina/o children and adolescents are not well articulated in the literature. Furthermore, research and demographic data indicate concerns for Latinas/os, such as acculturative stress and discrimination. This article describes treatment applications focused on Latina/o youth's cultural…

Four years of activities (1978-82) of Hajitkoum (Migrant Cultural Action Group), a predominantly Moroccan multicultural group of young immigrants based in a suburb of Brussels, are described. The group has the ultimate goal of providing the immigrant community with cadres, drawn from its young generations, who will be able to take on political and…