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Welcome to Minnesota: A Conversation about Immigration and Human Rights

May

25

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Alleen Brown

About me

Alleen Brown was born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her journalism degree came from the University of Minnesota. Her second language came from Buenos Aires. And her loyalty to frigid Minnesota came from a childhood spent in the shadow of the State Fair. Alleen's work has been published in the Pioneer Press, MinnPost.com and In These Times magazine.

Favorite Places:

Her back balcony, her front porch and her side garden

Twitter:

AlleenBrown

workaround

Campaign launched to address abysmal Indian attendance rates

By Alleen Brown, The Circle

When Roxanne Broden's daughter started school, Broden didn't understand how important the first years are. It was just kindergarten, what was the big deal if her daughter missed some days? Broden was young herself, she had her daughter when she was a teen. Now her kid is older, and she worries that those early absences will impact her girl's academic future.MORE »

St. Paul Hmong two-way immersion programs face challenges of enrolling non-Hmong students, developing curriculum

By Alleen Brown, TC Daily Planet

Nou Her is a pre-kindergarten teacher in the first Hmong immersion program in the nation, located at St. Paul’s Jackson Elementary school. She’s also a translator.

During the summer, on weekends, on weeknights and during prep hours, she translates children’s books, district curriculum, wall hangings and songs. “From big books to small books to rhyming to alliteration,” she said.

It’s what’s required for a program that teaches core curriculum in a language for which there exist virtually no commercial curriculum materials.MORE »

ESL conference speakers describe Minnesota's changing language learning landscape

By Alleen Brown, TC Daily Planet

The winner of this year’s ESL Advocate Award, Denise Harlos, described an experience many of the ESL teachers attending last week’s Minnesota ESL, Bilingual and Migrant Education Conference seemed to relate to.

She recalled starting as an ESL teacher in Shakopee 12 years ago, when she said there were 75 EL students speaking 10 languages. There was no English learning program. The schools couldn’t communicate with non-English-speaking parents, and they couldn’t find licensed ESL teachers.

She recalled being asked by one school board member, “How do you learn all those languages?”MORE »

Democracy chugs on at St. Paul school board listening session

By Alleen Brown, TC Daily Planet

On April 26, the St. Paul school board held its second of three listening sessions, open to community members interested in speaking directly to the board.MORE »

Minnesota's brightest students focus on dark side of past for History Day

By Alleen Brown, TC Daily Planet

Revolution, Reaction, Reform was the theme of this year’s History Day, and the projects on display in the University of Minnesota’s Coffman Union represented the range of violent topics that such a category invites.MORE »

Minnesota Department of Education describes how principals use restorative discipline practices

By Alleen Brown, TC Daily Planet

A survey released recently by the Minnesota Department of Education will help state advocates for restorative justice better understand how school principals use restorative practices to address student behavior.MORE »

Building bilingual kids: Three Minneapolis schools will offer Spanish-language classrooms for native speakers next year

By Alleen Brown, TC Daily Planet

Here are the elephant’s fosas nazales, third grade Andersen Elementary teacher Michelle Fonseca says, in Spanish. (Nostrils.)

He has a trompa (trunk), which one third-grader says he can use to “agarrar comida para poner en la boca.” (Grab food to put in his mouth.)

His orejas (ears) are largas (long), says one student, and suaves (soft), says another. Each writes his or her own description, in Spanish, of the estructuras (structures) that make up the elephant.MORE »

St. Paul students get down and dirty in Big Urban Woods

By Alleen Brown, TC Daily Planet

A neighborhood, three schools, a county and the DNR turned a forgotten patch of trees into an outdoor classroom and a community space.

That little patch of woods and all the things in it mean something different, depending on who you talk to and when. To passersby, the four-acre site is just one of those patches of trees you find all over the metro area — barely even woods at all.MORE »

Getting through the geek talk: Analyst explains St. Paul school discipline data

By Alleen Brown, TC Daily Planet

Judging from the rhetoric coming from some educators, data is going to save us all. They’re right that it might help, but not if we don’t understand it.MORE »

Partisan games keep citizens out of Minnesota integration debate

By Alleen Brown, TC Daily Planet

Susan Larson has two sons who attended the East Metro Integration District school Crosswinds. Her sons thrived there, she said, in part because of a school focus on integration.MORE »