James Baldwin was born on this day one-hundred-and-two years ago.

You might be interested in JAMES BALDWIN WAS BORN ON THIS DAY IN 1924 – HERE ARE RELATED RESOURCES.

TGrand / Pixabay

Hiroshima was bombed on August 6th and Nagasaki on August 9th.

If you in school and teaching about these tragedies, you might be interested in The Best Resources For Learning About The Atomic Bombings Of Japan.

You might also find this useful: The Best Sites For Learning About Nuclear Weapons

Ten years ago I began this regular feature where I share a few posts and resources from around the Web related to ESL/EFL or to language in general that have caught my attention.

You might also be interested in all my Best lists on teaching ELLs.

Also, check out A Collection Of My Best Resources On Teaching English Language Learners.

In addition, look for our latest book on teaching ELLs, The ELL Teacher’s Toolbox 2.0.

Here are this week’s choices:

Mainstream Teachers’ Perceptions of their English Language Learners’ Academic Attainment and their Own Preparedness to Teach this Population is an interesting study.

When speaking a new language, what matters most is your attitude — not your accuracy is from TED Talks.

Since 2022, NYC has received more than 200k asylum-seekers from the southern border; many were kids.

How has this increase in migrant kids influenced domestic kids?

Turns out, not much.

“Domestic students did not experience adverse impacts on enrollment, test scores, attendance, or absenteeism.”

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— John Holbein (@johnholbein1.bsky.social) January 1, 2026 at 6:40 AM

“Immigration and Education: Early Insights from the Buslift to New York City”

iza.org/publications…

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— John Holbein (@johnholbein1.bsky.social) January 1, 2026 at 6:40 AM

A Ready-Made Video Lesson on New Year’s Resolutions (Crisdget Jones) is from Blog de Cristina. I’m adding it to The Best Ways To Help Make Your New Year’s Resolutions Succeed.

Beyond the Science of Reading: How Bilingual Teachers Mediate Foundational Reading Pedagogies is from NCTE. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About Balanced Literacy & The “Reading Wars”

ELL students could watch this video and then discuss write what they saw:

I asked my Haitian students why they answer me in Creole. Here’s what they said. is from Chalkbeat.

How to Teach Reading Without Killing Motivation is from The Barefoot TEFL Teacher.

Teaching MFL to SEN Pupils: Ten Things That Really Matter (And why most materials still get them wrong) is from The Language Gym.

At the height of the pandemic, and ever since that time, many educators have been warning that lots of their colleagues have been leaving the classroom.

And those of us who have been issuing those warnings have often been pooh-poohed by education pundits.

Until recently.

How a years-long rise in teacher turnover reshaped American classrooms is a Chalkbeat article by Matt Barnum which details the numbers, and shares some of the reasons behind the exodus.

You can read Statistic Of The Day: Teachers’ Pay Isn’t So Great to learn more reasons.

You might also be interested in this exchange:

I remember when teachers were warning of this and pundits pooh-poohed it

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— Larry Ferlazzo (@larryferlazzo.bsky.social) July 30, 2026 at 2:10 PM

GDJ / Pixabay

Henrietta Lacks was born on this day 106 years ago.

You might be interested in HENRIETTA LACKS WOULD HAVE BEEN 100 YEARS OLD TODAY – HERE ARE TEACHING & LEARNING RESOURCES.

The Pudding always produces slick and interesting interactive infographics. Most of them, however, are fairly useless.

Not this one.

Their new Essential Words interactive compares what were considered the most common English words in 1953 to the ones identified in that category now.

The infographic’s subheading is:

How the Words We Teach English Language Learners Changed, and What That Says About Us

I think every teacher of English Language Learners will want to take a look…

geralt / Pixabay

I’ve just mailed out the August issue of my very simple free monthly email newsletter.

It has over 3,000 subscribers, and you can subscribe here.

Of course, you can also join the tens of thousands of others who subscribe to this blog daily: 7 WAYS YOU CAN SUBSCRIBE TO MY DAILY BLOG POSTS FOR FREE

When I first taught economics over ten years ago, pickings were pretty slim for engaging online financial literacy resources.

But the options have grown a lot since then, and now there are quite a few good online free programs, including some that are very accessible to English Language Learners (see The Best Sites For Learning Economics & Practical Money Skills).

Now there’s a new one to add to the list – Finlingo.

It seems to be story-based and pretty accessible.  It’s new, of course, so there’s no guarantee that it’s going to be around for the entire school year.  But I think it’s worth checking out.

Prawny / Pixabay

Here’s my regular round-up of new “The Best…” lists I posted this month (you can see all 2,604 of them categorized here – you might also want to check out THREE ACCESSIBLE WAYS TO SEARCH FOR & FIND MY “BEST” LISTS).

Here are the lists from this month:

All 2026 Mid-Year Education-Related “Best” Lists – In One Place!

The Most Important Qualities Of A Great ELL Teacher

The Best Resources About Cognates

The “Best” Lists Of Common Mistakes ELL Teachers Make & What They Should Do, Instead

2026’s Best Posts On Teaching English Language Learners – So Far

The Best Learning Games Of 2026 – So Far

2026’s Best Social Studies Resources – So Far

The Best Social Emotional Learning Resources Of 2026 – So Far

The Best Resources On Classroom Instruction In 2026 – So Far

The Best Sentences Of 2026 – So Far

The Best Resources On “Grade Inflation” – Everyone, Please Take A Chill Pill

I regularly highlight my picks for the most useful posts for each month — not including “The Best…” lists. I also use some of them in a more extensive monthly newsletter I send-out. You can see older Best Posts of the Month at Websites Of The Month (more recent lists can be found here).

You can also see my all-time favorites here. I’ve also been doing “A Look Back” series reviewing old favorites, too.

Here are some of the posts I personally think are the best, and most helpful, ones I’ve written during this past month (not in any order of preference) – also note that I group many updates on the Trump administration’s current attack on education and democracy in weekly posts you can find here):

All Student Handouts From Our Latest Book Are Now Available For Free Without Any Required Registration

“What Makes Teaching ‘Culturally Responsive’?” Is An Excerpt From Our New Book

You Can Read The First Chapter Of Our Book, The Better Teacher’s Toolbox, For Free!

Our Latest Book Has Been Published Early – “The Better Teacher’s Toolbox” Is Here!

Statistic Of The Day: Teachers’ Pay Isn’t So Great

ChatGPT Unveils New & Impressive Translation Features

It Would Be Chaotic, But I Think “Choo Choo Words” Could Be A Fun Learning Game To Play With ELLs

“An American Mosaic” Is An Impressive NY Times Interactive

“English, no kidding” Looks Like A Surprisingly Useful AI Site For ELLs & Their Teachers

I Like The Instructional Strategy Behind This Video: “Walking Through Writing a Compelling Essay”

Interesting Survey Results – Teachers Think Aides & A Searchable Data Base For Lessons Are The Two Best Things That Could Save Them Time

Holding A Kid Back A Grade? Not So Fast, New Study Suggests

Another Study Finds That VAM Performance Rankings Penalize Teachers With Students Facing Many Challenges

“How to Promote Student Voice in the Classroom”

“Teacher Action Research … in Action”

“This Is What Teachers Want From Their Leaders”

“Want to Retain Teachers? Ask the Right Recruitment Questions”

Spacesim looks like a pretty engaging tool – with images and audio-narrated text – for learning about planets and space.

I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Learning About Planets & Space.

The United Nations has declared that August 9th is International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples.

I’ve just revised and updated The Best Sites For International Day Of The World’s Indigenous People.

Educators not only consume research, they take part in the processes in their daily practice.

Here are some excerpts:

In the wake of recent murders of Black citizens, like George Floyd, and subsequent protests, there has been a lot of attention being paid to the concept of implicit bias and how to combat it.

There seem to be far fewer people questioning the existence of implicit bias than when Mike Pence was very confused about it at the Vice-Presidential debate.  You can see tons of resources about how it affects teachers at We Should Be Obsessed With Racial Equity.

The typical response to dealing with implicit bias in most professions, including in teaching and in police, is through having implicit bias trainings.   Unfortunately, research has been pretty clear that any positive impacts of these trainings are all very short-term (see ‘Implicit Bias’ Trainings Don’t Actually Change Police Behavior and Making people aware of their implicit biases doesn’t usually change minds. But here’s what does work).

Researcher Anthony Greenwald and famed educator Gloria Ladson-Billings agree on one thing that can work:

Greenwald says:

I think that a lot can be achieved just by collecting data to document disparities that are occurring as a result of bias. And maybe an easy example is police operations, although it can be applied in many settings.

Here’s what Ladson-Billings suggests:

You have to be able to look at your specific and local context, so for these teachers in Green Bay, I told them, “Well, why don’t you guys do this? Why don’t you go back and just pull your data, look at your suspension rates and who’s being suspended, look who’s being assigned to special education, look who gets into advanced placement class, look who’s in honors — just document that, and then share that with each other and say, ‘How do we explain it?’”

In the same interview, Ladson-Billings continues by saying:

People’s explanations will help you understand why certain things are happening. If their explanation is, “Well, you know, we have all these poor kids,” OK, the poverty is not gonna stop next week. Are we saying because the children are poor, they are incapable of X, Y or Z?

Greenwald, on the other hand, moves in a different direction with what he calls “discretion elimination”:

This can be applied when people are making decisions that involve subjective judgment about a person. This could be police officers, employers making hiring or promotion decisions, doctors deciding on a patient’s treatment, or teachers making decisions about students’ performance. When those decisions are made with discretion, they are likely to result in unintended disparities. But when those decisions are made based on predetermined, objective criteria that are rigorously applied, they are much less likely to produce disparities.

I’m not sure how well Greenwald’s suggestion would work in a K-12 environment – we’ve seen how a lack of discretion can result in harm to children with “no-excuses schools.” And the dangers in education of being “data-driven,” instead of being “data-informed,” are well-documented.

And we’ve also seen examples in education of where there has been discretion elimination (for example, restricting suspensions when data shows that African American students are suspended more often), some schools then have just faked data.  And others have just called suspensions something else.

If there’s agreement that teachers, particularly White ones, have implicit bias, and there’s agreement that implicit bias trainings aren’t very effective ways to deal with it, and there is agreement that analyzing data to identify how those biases “play-out” is an important next step, what do you think are effective institutional processes to use in order to then act on that data? What are strategies to then have useful conversations about what the data shows?

At our school, under the leadership of our English Department Chair, Antoine Germany, we’ve been analyzing the data and starting those conversations, though COVID-19 interrupted them.  I’m sure we’ll re-engage later in the summer and in the fall.

I’m all ears to hear your thoughts.

Addendum:

VIDEO: COULD CREATING “FRICTION” HELP US WHITE TEACHERS COMBAT OUR IMPLICIT BIASES?

Using Data to Advance Racial Equity is from Edutopia.

Training Bias Out of Teachers: Research Shows Little Promise So Far is from Ed Week.

A Simple Way to Self-Monitor for Bias is from Edutopia.

A Simple Exercise to Help You Check Your Biases is from the Harvard Business Review. It includes some pretty loopy ideas, but also a couple of good ones.

Guest Post: What Schools Could Do Instead Of Anti-Bias Trainings

This Idea of “Micro-Inclusions” Is A Good ADDITION TO, Not A REPLACEMENT OF, DEI Efforts

All student hand-outs from our latest book are now available for free on our book’s website.

Just go to the site and click on the “Related Resources” area circled in the image, and that will lead you to them.

If you click on “Excerpt,” you’ll be able to download the entire first chapter of the book.

If you like the book, we’d appreciate your considering writing a review on its Amazon page.

You can download hundreds of others from our previous books here.

geralt / Pixabay

At least, for now, I’m going to make this a weekly feature which will highlight additions to THE BEST NEW – & FREE – ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TOOLS THAT COULD BE USED IN THE CLASSROOM:

YouTube to Blog will create a blog post from any YouTube link.

TikClass lets you create a “gamified” online course.

Top Coloring Pages is yet another AI tool for…coloring pages.

How AI Can Build Inquiry Skills in the Classroom is by Mary Beth Hertz.

To Detect AI Writing, Look For This Sentence Structure is from Fast Company.

Project Unicorn is thrilled to introduce you to Uni, a custom-built AI assistant designed by Project Unicorn. Uni is specifically trained to help educators, IT directors, and policymakers navigate the complex world of K-12 education technology and data interoperability. Unlike a generic chatbot, Uni’s knowledge base is carefully curated from trusted sources, ensuring the guidance you receive is not only accurate but also relevant to real-world challenges in the field.

Writers and Artists Need a Way to Label AI Use: Here’s What That Could Look Like

Teach anything. Chatbots For Education lets any educator create a … chatbot. I’m adding it to The Best Tools For Creating Chatbots.

You Can’t AI-Proof the Classroom, Experts Say. Get Creative Instead. is from Inside Higher Ed. I’m adding it to The “Best” Strategies For Creating AI-Resistant Assignments.

Pretty much every article I read about “integrating” AI into the writing classroom brings me back to the conclusion I work through here: We should teach writing, not document production. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu…

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— John Warner (@biblioracle.bsky.social) January 19, 2026 at 6:14 AM

This is a rough draft. What do you think?

Could this be useful for your students?

What might need to change?

(You may need to click on the image to see the whole thing!)

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— Brett Vogelsinger (@thevogelman.bsky.social) January 19, 2026 at 11:04 AM

It is very concerning to me that some people whose judgment I have generally held in high esteem in the past are writing pieces very positive about Alpha School

— Larry Ferlazzo (@larryferlazzo.bsky.social) January 20, 2026 at 8:07 AM

Khan’s SAT prep helped my students, and I can see how a Spanish-speaking chatbot could be a helpful use of ai

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— Larry Ferlazzo (@larryferlazzo.bsky.social) January 21, 2026 at 12:22 PM

I really value Dan Meyers’s work. Here, he writes that “I think generative AI is perhaps the most overrated education technology of my lifetime…” AND demonstrates a very specific application where it is useful for math instruction.

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— Jon Becker (@jonbecker.bsky.social) January 21, 2026 at 10:21 AM

I’ve seen reports via social media and my email about students using AI on their personal statements for grad programs. This is an opportunity to rethink the what and why of the writing we ask for in these situations. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu…

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— John Warner (@biblioracle.bsky.social) January 22, 2026 at 6:02 AM

AI Twin: Enhancing ESL Speaking Practice through AI Self-Clones of a Better Me

Eight years ago I began this regular feature where I share a few posts and resources from around the Web related to ESL/EFL or to language in general that have caught my attention.

You might also be interested in all my Best lists on teaching ELLs.

Also, check out A Collection Of My Best Resources On Teaching English Language Learners.

In addition, look for our latest book on teaching ELLs, The ELL Teacher’s Toolbox 2.0.

Here are this week’s choices:

Persuading the Peculiar: a Speaking Game is from On the Same Page ELT.

ELL students could watch these videos and then talk/write about what they saw:

The Effectiveness of Scramble Technique to Teach Reading Skills on Descriptive Text of Seventh Grade Students is a new study. I’m not sure how good it is, but it also refers to other studies on the same technique, and I haven’t seen much research on it. I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Creating Sentence Scrambles.

Can Apple’s AirPod Translation Get You Through Tokyo? We Tested It. is from The NY Times. I’m adding it to THE BEST RESOURCES TO HELP ELL STUDENTS WITH SIMULTANEOUS TRANSLATION IN THE CLASSROOM.

Looking Back Before Looking Forward is from A Journey In TEFL. I’m adding it to The Best Ways To Help Make Your New Year’s Resolutions Succeed.

AI Translation Breaks Down Language Barriers in K–12 Schools is from Ed Tech Magazine. I’m adding it to THE BEST RESOURCES TO HELP ELL STUDENTS WITH SIMULTANEOUS TRANSLATION IN THE CLASSROOM.

January Reset or January Damage? – Common Mistakes Language Teachers Make When Returning After the Holidays is from The Language Gym.

Federal English-Learner Grant Returns This Fall Under New Oversight is from Ed Week.

Start by assuming that students come to the classroom with important things to say.

Here are some excerpts:

OpenClipart-Vectors / Pixabay

An armistice was signed on this day in 1953, ending active hostilities in the Korean War.

You might be interested in The Best Sites For Learning About The Korean War.

birgl / Pixabay

Like clockwork, a flurry of articles on the horrors of grade “inflation” have come up every year for decades.

Just this week, one on topic for college and another for K-12 have been making the rounds.

I think educators, students and the world would be better off if everyone just chilled out.

Last year, I shared my thought on it in this TikTok video (you might also be interested in Do We Give A Zero Or 50% For Work Not Turned-In? Here Are Some Useful Commentaries):

@larry.ferlazzo Is grade inflation a problem? #teachertok #teachersoftiktok #esl ♬ original sound – larry.ferlazzo

Addendum: Check this out from The NY Times Learning Network: What Teenagers Are Saying About Limiting A’s to Curb Grade Inflation

Or as the authors put it less provocatively in another part of this paper: “We find that mean grade inflation reduces earnings by about $56 to $145 a year.” https://t.co/oODtWtHdZ2

— Michael Pershan (@mpershan) March 16, 2026

Looks unpublished, correlation and effect sizes are near zero (looks like in the r = .02 to .05 range) which means they are very likely methodological noise, not real effects.

I don’t like grade inflation either, but maybe we shouldn’t jump at morally appealing claims without a… https://t.co/uRZwTL6T3B

— Chris Ferguson 🇮🇪☘️🍺🍀🌈🎩💚 (@CJFerguson1111) March 17, 2026

When lenient grading helps and when it harms is from From Experience To Meaning.

This episode of @llassabe.bsky.social’s podcast “American Campus” about grade inflation with @thetattooedprof.bsky.social is really, really good! www.buzzsprout.com/2396665/epis…

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— Josh Eyler (@josheyler.bsky.social) May 7, 2026 at 12:20 PM

Here are some older articles on the topic that are worth reading:

Don’t Worry About Grade Inflation. Worry About Grading Fairly.

Is the new handwringing over grade inflation inflated? Yes. https://t.co/6XWHPil0eP

— Ralph Pantozzi (@mathillustrated) November 16, 2023

Addendum:

Harvard Caps A’s as Selective Colleges Attack Grade Inflation www.nytimes.com/2026/05/20/u…

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— Larry Ferlazzo (@larryferlazzo.bsky.social) May 20, 2026 at 9:04 AM

Director’s Cut of Op-Ed on Harvard’s Grade Cap is by Josh Eyler.