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The “Best” Lists Of Common Mistakes ELL Teachers Make & What They Should Do, Instead u_7x3atxgugk / Pixabay
Teachers have no shortage of mistakes they make, including teachers of ELLs. I’m not sure that I agree with all the ones listed in the resources on this list, but I do with many of them: Before the New Term Begins: Twelve Research-Backed Pitfalls NOVICE MFL Teachers Should Avoid is from The Language Gym. This is a series from my Ed Week column: Nine Mistakes Educators Make When Teaching English-Language Learners 12 Common Mistakes Made by Teachers of English-Language Learners Don’t Make Assumptions About Your ELL Students Teachers Must Create Ways ELL ‘Students Can Show Us What They Know’ Teachers With ‘Deficit Perspectives’ Do Not Help English-Language Learners  Teaching ESL: 7 Common Mistakes That English Teachers Make is from Jeff Davis. 7 Common Mistakes Every ESL Teacher Makes is from ESL Lab. 5 Common Mistakes English Teachers Make (and How to Avoid Them) is from ESL Base. 5 Signs A Teacher Isn’t Truly Teaching is from David Deubelbeiss.       Around The Web In ESL/EFL/ELL
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: Adapting to Changes in California’s English Learner Population is from PPIC. Here are two videos that ELLs could watch and then talk/write about what they saw:   Research in brief: Harnessing the translanguaging corriente is from ELT Planning. I’m adding it to THE BEST RESOURCES FOR LEARNING ABOUT TRANSLANGUAGING. Meet the researcher using sass and social media to transform bilingual education is from Ed Source. Thousands More English Learners Will Soon Be Taking a Popular Language Exam is from Ed Week.
I’m adding this video to The Best Resources For Using “If This Animal Or Image Could Talk” Lesson Idea In Class:  I’m adding this to THE BEST RESOURCES FOR LEARNING ABOUT TRANSLANGUAGING: I’m adding this video to The Best Ways To Use Photos In Lessons: 
 ChatGPT Unveils New & Impressive Translation Features geralt / Pixabay
Translation tools are not substitutes for learning the language. However, they can be huge helps for content teachers who have beginning English Language Learners in their classrooms and when teachers need to communicate with parents/guardians of their students (Of course, live translators are critical to have for all important school/parent conversations). Google Translate is great, of course, and there are others I discuss at THE BEST RESOURCES TO HELP ELL STUDENTS WITH SIMULTANEOUS TRANSLATION IN THE CLASSROOM. ChatGPT just unveiled new translation features, too, and Joe Dale has written a great description of how they can also be used by language learners for conversation practice. Here’s a video from OpenAI describing some of their new features – I have it set to start at a model of how their translation abilities work:  I asked ChatGPT about it, and here’s the transcript of my conversation: The new real-time translation features of ChatGPT be used on phone, my phone, or do they have to be used just in person? Yes, you can use ChatGPT’s new real-time translation features on your phone. In fact, the feature is designed primarily for phones and works through ChatGPT’s voice mode on both iPhones and Android devices. The newest voice mode can listen and speak at the same time and supports live translation conversations. (OpenAI Help Center) There are two main ways you can use it:
For example, if you are calling someone who speaks Spanish, you could say, “Translate everything I say into Spanish and everything they say into English.” ChatGPT can then act as an interpreter during the conversation. One limitation is that ChatGPT itself does not yet integrate directly into ordinary phone calls the way Apple’s new Live Translation feature does on supported iPhones. Apple’s system can translate inside the Phone app, FaceTime, and Messages. (Apple Support) Since you have an iPhone 11, Apple’s built-in live phone-call translation will not be available to you because it requires newer iPhones that support Apple Intelligence. (Apple Support) However, you should still be able to use ChatGPT’s voice translation features in the ChatGPT app itself. For both ChatGPT and for Apple’s Live Translation feature, do both people have to have it on their phones in order for it to work? No. For both systems, only one person needs to have the feature, but they work a little differently.
The big difference is convenience. Apple’s feature is built directly into phone calls and messages, so it feels seamless. ChatGPT can also translate phone conversations, but you have to keep the ChatGPT app running alongside the call rather than having the translation built into the Phone app itself. For your iPhone 11, ChatGPT’s translation features should work, but Apple’s Live Translation feature requires a newer iPhone that supports Apple Intelligence.  Sentences Of The Week geralt / Pixabay
I thought readers might, or might not, find this new regular post useful. Each week, I highlight several sentences, with links to their sources, that I find interesting/concerning/useful. And they may, or may not, be directly connected to education. I may also include my own comments or related links. This regular post will join my other regular ones on teaching ELLs, education policy, Artificial Intelligence, infographics, and Pinterest highlights, not to mention sharing of my regular Education Week posts. You might be interested in The Best Sentences Of 2026 – So Far. Here are this week’s sentences: Burnout is an energy problem. Demoralization is a values problem. More than half of K-12 public school teachers who took part in the 2026 State of the American Teacher Survey reported experiencing frequent job-related stress, down from 62% the year before. Stress is much lower among similar working adults, with about 34% reporting frequent job-related stress, according to the report. Gibbon’s singular insight was that the whole point of reading a history book — or writing one — is not to come away with one big truth. The stealthy purpose of studying history is to get you comfortable with changing your mind. See THE BEST – & MOST INTERESTING – RESOURCES FOR STUDYING HISTORY Kids will run through walls to get published. See The Best Places Where Students Can Write For An “Authentic Audience” My students deserve to live and learn in a place where their only worry might be whether they studied enough for the science test or whether they made the baseball team, not whether their life will be uprooted by the presence of ICE at the local grocery store. See The Best Resources To Support Schools, Teachers, Students & Families In The Face Of Trump’s Deportation Threats The small, rural district located on the Seneca Nation reservation is set to be one of the first in the country to put a humanoid robot in a classroom. When RAND studied personalized learning models in schools—many of which plunked kids behind computers by themselves for extended periods of time, distilling all their ideas and brilliance into line graphs and bar charts—they found decreases of up to 10% on questions of safety and belonging compared to national averages. Young people, he argued, need three mental habits: (1) goals thinking, a clear picture of the future; (2) pathways thinking, a realistic plan to get there; and (3) agency thinking, the confidence and energy to pursue that plan. In 2011 78 percent of Americans reported reading a book in some form in the previous year; in 2013 it was 76 percent; in 2021 it was 75 percent; and in 2025 it was 75 percent again. Students whose teachers had access to the AI tool rated their classes as less enjoyable, less interesting and less important than students in the control group. Google’s artificial intelligence search tools solve homework problems for students, provide inaccurate answers to search questions, and fail to respond properly to potential red flags for unsafe behavior, according to a review by Common Sense Media, a nonprofit focused on youth and technology.
 A Look Back: We Shouldn’t “Empower” Students – Instead We Should Create The Conditions Where They Can Take It OpenClipart-Vectors / Pixabay
I saw a tweet, that has since been deleted, about “empowerment.” If you look up the definition of “empower” in most dictionaries, it will say something like this: give (someone) the authority or power to do something. I don’t believe you can “give” power to anyone, just as you can’t “give” agency to students or motivate them. However, as I said in the tweet (and which I borrow and modify from Sir Ken Robinson), we can create conditions in which they can grow and flourish. That since deleted tweet prompted me to tweet this:
It received a number of responses, including this question:
I sent out a couple of quick tweets in response:
What are actions you take to create conditions for students to gain and exercise power in your classroom? You might also be interested in: The Best Resources On Student Agency & How To Encourage It The Best Posts & Articles On Building Influence & Creating Change Best Posts On “Motivating” Students
ADDENDUM: See Guest Post: Ways To Create A Student-Driven Class
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