ELL teacher and blogger Larry Ferlazzo writes that many Hmong students, some of whom are English-language learners, at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, Calif., missed school yesterday to protest charges brought against General Vang Pao, who is Hmong, and 10 others. The general and the other 10 have been charged with trying to overthrow the communist government of Laos.
Ferlazzo has been tapping into his students’ interest in the court case involving Gen. Pao, who is a leader of the Hmong community in the United States, by teaching civics lessons and developing exercises for language learning from newspaper coverage of the issue.