Life Is Fair

July 29th, 2010

Leo Rong Jiang Ming graduated from The Manhattan International High School in June 2010.  He will be attending Stanford University in the fall to study Chemical Engineering.

People say that life is a long journey. Well, thankfully, our journey has only begun.  So far, our journey has taken us here …  to this moment… after four years of hard work and a love of learning at Manhattan International High School. As our high school chapter comes to an end, we have so much to look forward to. However, it’s more important at this moment for us to first look back, not only to revisit those wonderful memories with one another, but also to thank everyone who has been there for us the entire time, supporting us and helping us along our journey.

First, we must give our heartfelt thanks to all the teachers, administration and staff. As new immigrants in the 9th grade, we were in our most difficult stage of life so far. During that time, all of us were wary of the new society we began to live in. Not only did we have to learn a new language, experience a new culture, and fit in to a new life style, but we also had to bear all the misunderstandings and prejudices from many Americans we encountered. Nevertheless, after coming to MIHS, we found a community with teachers and staff that did not prejudge us, that understood every one of us and that was there to help us. The teachers were patient but also passionate to teach us English in the four content areas of math, science, social studies and English.  In addition, they helped us learn more about this rich American society. On top of that, each teacher was also very interested in our diverse cultures and very respectful of our traditions. Thank you teachers for respecting us, for trusting us, and for teaching us.

One of the great teachers at this school is Mr. Moses who told us on the first day of class… “Life is not fair”… Through those words of wisdom, he reminded us that although we were facing all these difficulties, that is never an excuse to run away from our responsibilities, to work hard and be successful in life, whatever that means to us. Success is not easy for an American-born student.  So, as proud immigrants to this country, we must work twice or three times as hard as American born students. That’s how we can make our lives fairer ourselves. So thank you, Mr. Moses and Life IS fair . . .  if you make it so yourself!  Fellow graduates, let us all strive hard to make our lives fair.

At MIHS, we haven’t only received the help and tutoring we needed to pass classes and receive credit, but we were also challenged, like any other American high school student, to learn the various content of the four subject areas.  For example, in the beginning of our junior year, each one of us was wary of the tough work we would be doing. In fact, the work was very tough: We had to read at least three pages of deep historical texts every single night with Mr. Steve and have weekly English writings with Ms Rodica, biology quizzes with Ms Marigle, and new math concepts to be learned with Mr. Seth, Ms. Jelena, or Mr. B. However, after two years of preparation with the freshmen and sophomore teachers, we all made it through junior year with drastic improvement to our reading and writing skills. Thanks to these challenges, we were now ready for the college level studies we encountered in our senior year.  And boy, did we encounter them. Ms. Cinzia, Ms. Gretchen, Mr. Andy and Mr. Seth, thank you for continuing to push us till the last month of our senior year in academic.  Your work has gotten us truly ready for the challenges we will face in college. Therefore, thank you!

After four years with our teachers and staff members, they became more like family members to us. In school, we were never afraid to approach the adults in the school and ask them for help regarding matters outside of the class. These matters could be about college worries, career advice, philosophical discussions, and relationships with other people… The “marketplace of ideas” was open to everyone and I’m so grateful for that.  We could talk about anything.

Therefore, at this moment I hope I can represent the class of 2010 to thank every teacher and staff member here in Manhattan International H.S. Thank you all for four years of support and care. We will always remember you and the work you have done to make this school, this culture, this family so comfortable for each and every one of us.

Fellow graduates, we also must not forget the people sitting next to us on this stage right now. Guys, thank your friends for always being there for you in the past four years. Despite all the differences in our languages, cultures, family backgrounds, and past experiences, we shared the same experience in the United States.  We were all in the “same boat”. And because of this uniqueness we shared, we bonded with one another more tightly as years passed by. For us, our differences did not become a barrier, but an accelerator.  We all learned so much from one another. We constantly try to say words in each other’s language, eat different cultural foods, and learn about one another’s tradition.

For example, whenever one of us has to order food, we will always make sure to ask whether there is pork in it. That’s because we know that our  Muslim  friends do not eat pork. By learning from each other, we not only became more knowledgeable about different cultures, but we also developed an open mind to try and learn anything that’s new to us.

In school, our differences also made us work better in groups, because of the diverse knowledge and culture we possessed together. On the soccer field or volleyball court, we were always proud of how diverse of a team we had. Therefore, for all the support we received and all the knowledge we learned from one another, give a huge thank to all of your graduating class. Thank you (this is from me), class of 2010, for giving me the most memorable four years of my life so far. Thank you so much.

Next, we should all not forget to thank our parents. For all of us, our parents also came to this country as new immigrants. They had to face the same adversities that we faced. However, they did not have the option to study in American schools. Instead, they chose to work one job, two jobs, or more so that they could provide us that opportunity to learn and succeed in the United States. Without their hard work, we would never have the stability to study and succeed. So guys, let us all give our parents a warm hug, a kiss on the cheek, and a sincerely thank you after this ceremony.

Lastly, I’d like to give a huge shout out to the security officers, cafeteria workers, custodial staff and all the other people who make this building run smoothly and keep it safe and clean.  Hey, everyone, I think if we all yell THANK YOU as loud as we can, the whole building will hear us.  Lets try it, 1-2-3.. . . . THANK YOU!!!!!!

So, as we eat cake and walk around today to congratulate each other, let us stop once in a while to give thanks back to those that helped us.

And at this moment, I will be a little selfish because I want to thank my own parents in the crowd.

Mom, thank you! Thank you for being a role model to me. Thank you for everything. You have taught me to be a better person. Thank you, above everything, for teaching me the importance of appreciation. I remember you told me, “In life, there is no one (no one) who is supposed to support and help you; so when they do, you better appreciate them and thank them”.

Thank you dad! Thank you for being the most loving dad in the world. I know that in this world there is no other person who loves mom and me more than you do.   And you are loved right back… just as much.

Lastly, class of 2010, don’t forget to pat yourself on the back. Thank yourself for putting in all the effort to finish your homework, for choosing to read those difficult texts instead of watching TV, and for going to tutoring after school instead of playing in the yard. Although we will graduate today and soon move on in our life journey, we should enjoy and cherish this moment with everyone here.

Let us thank all the people who helped us along this chapter, this journey of our life. Let us also get ready to perform to the best of our ability in college, and in our life beyond college. Know that as we live our lives, we do not just represent ourselves, but also Manhattan International High School. Let us remember all the great memories we’ve had together in this school, our cherished home during the journey of these past four years.

Congratulation my fellow Class of 2010! We made it!

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Perseverance

July 21st, 2010

Gurcharan Singh graduated from The International High School at LaGuardia Community College in June 2010 and will be attending the City University of New York in the fall to study engineering.  Gurcharan’s speech is sparked by his humor.

I never understood the meaning of the expression having “butterflies in the stomach”, but now I think I feel it thoroughly.

I am very honored today to address the Principal, the amazing faculty, all the parents and of course this great, talented, diverse Class of 2010. I am proud to be a part of you.

Now graduates, I would like you to take a moment, turn to the students sitting next to you and shake hands……. You have just greeted future doctors, businessmen, soccer players, singers, electric engineers, hairdressers, child psychologists, journalists, actresses,marketeers and pharmacists. And now I can officially say everybody has been touched by my speech.

I still remember that on the first day of my freshman year, I was so quiet and shy that some of you would not believe me now that I am giving a speech. Most of you  have been in the same situation. But look at us now, we have grown unconsciously. And when we look back to that freshman year, we might say, “That was me?”

The graduating class of 2010 has shared a lot despite our different languages, cultures and backgrounds. We all at some point did blame it on the 7 train when we were late; when we needed gym credits we all got a little help from our friends; and we all have crossed the racial barriers when it came down to sharing the homework in our productive lounge. Other people might not mingle, but you see we are united and stand together in sharing these survival skills needed to get through high school.

Parents don’t worry, we learned something here, too. We worked hard in our studies, maybe mama-huhu as Carol used to say, but we did. We passed high school classes, we also took college classes and passed the, and, with this, we are one step ahead of other kids in the game. We had internships and did community service. We passed Regents exams. We worked hard with our mentors to finish our portfolios and prepare for our presentations.

Getting all of this work done on top of learning English requires tremendous perseverance. We should carry on this perseverance because this is the hard work that will lead us our future selves. Do you know how many times Alexander Graham Bell failed to get the telephone working and how many years Jay Z worked before getting that Grammy? My point is try your hardest and the day won’t be far when you are going to get what you wish for.

After today, our perseverance will be tested. The world is less comfy outside of IHS, but we have to stand strong and not give up. Let’s remember the very thing our parents came to this country searching for: a better future and for us to have the opportunities they never had. I do want to thank our parents for all the things they have given us: leading us when we were not doing the right things in our life, for being there when we needed them the most.  And of course, I want to thank the teachers for all the personal attention they have given us and the help they were, and are, willing to offer; I am sure most of us, have grown close to one teacher or another, whom we consider a friend; well, I proudly can say I have. I want to also thank my counselors, our principal, the staff, all the haters for pushing me to work to my fullest potentials and my ten year old son Kulwinder, and lastly my younger brother (who gave me money to mention him).

Whatever God you believe in, who is watching over us now, thank you.

Thanks especially to the class of 2010 for listening to me and letting me remind you that no class is better than my class of 2010. Thanks for giving me this moment because at the end of our journeys, one day looking back, when you will connect the dots, it will be the moments like this one that will make the end very beautiful.

So best of luck in all of your endeavors and make the best of the interesting and boring, the kind and the mean, the great and the small: whatever you call life.

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“The Greatest Way to Predict the Future is to Invent It”

July 14th, 2010

This post continues our Student Voices series.  Jie Bin Liu graduated from The Brooklyn International High School this June and will be attending Colby College in Maine this fall.  This is his valedictory speech.

Principal Pam, teachers, parents, friends, and fellow graduates, it is truly an honor for me to speak to all of you today.

I have a few words that I would like to address to the graduating class. Seniors, we have always been a very diverse group of people. We come from different regions of the world. We speak different languages and have very diverse cultural backgrounds. After the graduation today, we will all be going in different directions. The past four years at BIHS has been an important time in my life. And I’m sure it has been an important time in your lives as well. There has been a lot of change and growth in all of us over the past four years.

Four years ago I was 14 and I remember my first day of school at BIHS. I was excited with my new classmates and teachers. Jason, I still remember how hilarious you were in the first math class you had with us. Remember how you sprayed water on your hair, trying to fix it? And Scott, your history class gave me and other new students strong impressions and still catches our interests today. It was the first time in my life I felt going to school was a fun thing.

Four years ago we were all freshmen. We liked to stick with people that spoke our own language. Four years later, we are still close with people who speak our language but we are also friends with students from other countries. Unity is a lesson I have learned, seen and experienced at BIHS. Being in this united environment, I have opened up myself to other people around me more. I am more eager to participate in class discussions and to get involved in different clubs and activities at school and outside of school. I never expected I would be as social and outgoing as today. In the course of fours years, we have made so many lifetime friends at BIHS.

Today, I know that I am standing on the edge of a future that it going to be the rest of my life. I am inspired by a quote from one of the greatest American computer scientists, Alan Kay. He said, “The greatest way to predict the future is to invent it.”

Some of us here today, including our parents, are wondering how our lives are going to turn out. It is okay to wonder. But I also think it is important to realize that our future is not just something that happens to us. It is up to us to create.

So, Class of 2010, I urge you today to embrace the opportunities before you. Take what you have learned the last 4 years at BIHS and put it to good use. Make these lessons become the working parts of your greatest invention, YOUR LIFE! Congratulations, The Brooklyn International High School Class of 2010!

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What is an Outsider?

July 7th, 2010

Katerina Andreadis is a 2010 graduate of The Manhattan International High School.  She will be attending Hunter College in the fall to study psychology and pre-med.  This is her graduation speech.

What is an outsider? How do you stop being an outsider? Did you feel this way when you entered this country?

I traveled to America to live with my mother, brother and stepfather in our small apartment on 62nd street in July of 2006. I had no other relatives or friends. I was given a choice of a few high schools to attend. I chose the school closest to us, it was as simple as that. I had no idea what the school was about. I walked in to Mr. John’s earth science class. I entered. I stopped. I looked. There was a Spanish group, what looked like a Polish group and a group of four Asian girls. I sat with the Asian girls. I spent the whole class in silence, trying to figure out why Americans put dots on decimal numbers instead of commas, like they do in Greece. Trying to break the silence, I turned and asked the Asian girl next to me, “Can you help me with this?” Four years later, that girl, Kay, is one of my best friends. In the next few months, in Mr. Moses’ class, we had to write our goals and priorities. My whole life, my main goal was to be with my mother. I had finally achieved that. So now my main and only goal was to lose weight. As time passed, and I was safe at home and I no longer felt different and alone at school, my set of goals began to expand. You, my fellow students and teachers, are the ones that helped me find my motivation and interests.

It wasn’t what subjects the teachers taught us so much as the way they taught us.

Do you remember Ms. Rodica and her human condition mind map? How we used the thesaurus to identity the many themes and states in life which are always represented in literature? I will never read another literature book without going back to that map. When Ms. Rodica was preparing us for the English Regents, she told us to make a commercial advertising a pair of pliers. “Who is the audience? What is the tone? What is the strategy?” Now, before I write anything, I sit back and think about what I learned from creating a plier commercial.

Mr. B, our philosopher of the school took us to an outer world in math class! He would begin with an equilateral triangle, continue by talking about motion and end the class with a trip to the universe! Nobody left his class without a feeling of amusement and learning something new.

Across the hall, was Ms. Marigle’s classroom filled with living things. My three turtles, Kay’s gold fish, and many colorful plants gave the room a feeling of aliveness. Some people might have slept, but I discovered my love for biology. We also learned the necessity of having to take care of living things! You have no idea how terrible turtles can smell!

And remember that nobody would dare be late in Mr. Steve’s class? Five points off! The cold in his room, from the wide-open windows, was ignored due to the heat from our debates in the classroom! People who never spoke participated! I don’t think the founding fathers themselves debated with so much energy!

Energy that our class, the class of 2010, created during our four years together. The bonds that we built, while working in groups on class projects, like making a periodic table with your favorite element in Ms. Amy’s chemistry class. The help we gave each other when it was time for portfolios. The admiration and respect we felt for the seniors who presented their stories in the auditorium, like Omar and Esmerald. We are a family at Manhattan International High School. A family that supports, helps, and teaches one another. And I’m proud to be part of that family.

So, how do you stop being an outsider? I started feeling a part of our high school in my sophomore year. Some people have said that I don’t look like an outsider, but I will always have a part of that feeling in me. Maybe each of us has at times felt like an outsider.
Like many of you, I am happy and sad today because we will each have to find a new place and people to feel connected. That doesn’t mean that our feelings of feeling connected and accepted in Manhattan International HS will not stay with us forever. I will always remember this high school, this community, that made me the motivated and responsible person I am today.

It’s very easy to itemize a list of things that Manhattan International HS does not have: not many afterschool activities, not a great variety of AP courses, even though we do have our great AP Calculus class with Mr.Seth, and I’m sure you can think of more things. But what this school does have is a special and unique group of students and teachers. There is a feeling of community and family. No one is an outsider in this school. My group of friends debate on just about everything. Dandara from Brazil, Magda from Poland, Leah from Columbia, Liliana from Peru, Christine from China, Kay from Thailand, and I do not agree on much, but we do share laughter, adventures, support and our friendship. In 9th grade, people sat with people who looked like them. By 12th grade you could care less and you sit wherever there is a seat. Hopefully, each of us and the whole world will continue to be more like this and sit where there is a seat!

I want to thank all the parents and families and friends of our class for coming today. We know that you have watched, and worried and applauded through all these years. I thank you mom, Niko and my brother Alex. Thank you Mr. Alan, Ms. Gladys, our wonderful teachers, our councilors, Ms. Marlene and Ms. Michelle and most of all you, thank you Class of 2010! I shall never forget you!

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Autonomy at Oakland International High School

May 12th, 2010

This week’s blog post is written by Toby Rugger, a founding teacher at Oakland International High School. Toby writes about his interdisciplinary teaching team – which consists of an English, a math, a history, a reading, and an Arts/PE teacher – and both the decisions they make as a team and the decisions the whole faculty makes together.

Team Autonomy: Team meetings

We always start our Tuesday after-school interdisciplinary teacher team meetings with “The Good, the Bad and the Personal.” In this ritual, before discussing serious issues on our agenda, the teachers on our teaching team check in with each other about something good happening in our classes, something bad happening in our classes, and something personal that’s happening in our lives. I like this ritual because taking time to reflect on the positive and building inter-personal relationships with other teachers are two things that enable me to get through all the “bad” things we face when teaching. The fact that we created this ritual ourselves just serves as a small example of how teacher ideas are heard and incorporated into our school on many levels. After this ritual, our team leader asks for items for our agenda; when the agenda is set we often have conversations such as this one:

Teacher 1: “So, what are we going to do about Frank getting out of his seat all the time? It’s really distracting other students and is driving me crazy.”
Teacher 2: “Call his mother and have her come in.”
Teacher 3: “I think we should have a team meeting with him.”
Teacher 1: “In my class, I already told him he needs to ask for permission before getting out of his seat. I think we should all tell him that.”
Teacher 4: “I agree, I’ll tell him that we spoke and that all teachers expect him to do that.”
Teacher 2: “Sounds good. Is that all? Great. Now, the next student we were going to talk about was….”

Whereas in other schools, some issues such as this might be resolved by a trip to a guidance counselor, in our team meetings, these issues are often (but not always) quite quickly resolved in brief, 2-minute conversations such as the one just described. Our team meets on Tuesdays in a weekly team meeting which start at 3:45, usually with cookies I’ve gotten by sprinting to the café and back, and end whenever we are done, usually between 4:30 and 5:30. During our meeting, we discuss many issues, but mostly students, school issues, and problems that have arisen, and together we support each other and work out solutions. Sometimes we save student issues for the next day, Wednesday, since we often have time during our whole-school professional development meetings (two and a half hours long) to discuss student issues for an hour. Then, on Thursday, our team leader meets with the principal and the other two team leaders to get further support on issues that we aren’t able to resolve. Through these frequent team meetings, we grow as a staff, share different strategies for resolving problems, and, when our team solutions work, we all share a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment with our colleagues. The end result is that teachers learn and grow through this collaboration, which is one of the major goals of the Internationals philosophy of localized autonomy, accomplished in this case by team decision-making.

Faculty Autonomy: Lunchtime at OIHS

At Oakland International teachers have duties which we, quite literally, call lunch duties. Unlike the lunch duties at many schools, however, our lunch duties are a reflection of our power to make school-wide decisions.

OIHS doesn’t have enough support staff to monitor the cafeteria but, because fights sometimes occur at lunch, teachers wanted to create a system in which staff would be more present and able to monitor different areas of the school in order to cut down on lunch time problems. Having taught in the school for three years, I was determined to improve monitoring of the lunch line since cutting the line sometimes led to fights. We also wanted to decrease messiness in the cafeteria and littering on the soccer field. Three of us brainstormed different tasks that would be needed at lunch and created a proposed schedule in which different teachers would perform different duties one day a week at lunch. I gave the proposal to our leadership team, who showed it to the principal. Together they tweaked it and it became part of our school culture. I had no idea if my proposal would be accepted, but it was definitely empowering to be able to make a suggestion and have it reviewed and implemented.

Team Autonomy: Improving student learning through greater consistency across content areas

I can think of two examples that stand out for me regarding how teachers have come together to make important decisions that have actually affected the school as a whole. The first came at the end of the first year of our school, when we were a team of about six teachers, and were reflecting on how the year had gone and changes we wanted to make in the following year. During the course of the school year, it had become apparent that students were sometimes confused about basic procedures in classes. Their confusion was natural, because basic procedures differed from class to class. For example, where one teacher would call the introductory activity a “Do Now” another teacher was calling it a “Warm-Up.” Some teachers told students their grades every two weeks; others gave grades every two months. The confusion was even more extreme because during the first year of our school we had only had 9th graders (we were adding a new grade each year), many of whom spoke little or even no English.

As a result of this confusion, teachers got together and decided that consistency was needed to reduce the confusion of students trying to move from one procedural system to another, period after period. Consistency, we decided, would allow students to better focus on the content they were supposed to be learning. To create greater consistency, teachers agreed that it would be good to come up with a “binder system” that was already organized for students after our principal, Carmelita Reyes, and I shared an example of a binder system we had seen at a workshop. In our binder system, students are given a binder with a section for each class. Each section is already labeled “Science,” “History,” “English,” “Math,” or “Reading/Art.” Each class section looks identical, and students are given identical pink “Do Now” paper and identical yellow “Objective and Agenda” paper. By color-coding different papers, students who speak little English know what page they are supposed to be on, and teachers can easily see if a student is on the wrong page. In addition, all teachers write an assignment number at the bottom of every handout given to a student. This way, a teacher can say he or she is collecting, for example, “Assignment 43.” Before we started numbering assignments, we found ourselves waving sample copies of what we were collecting in front of students, or saying, “Please take out the assignment with Karl Marx’s picture at the top,” which, as you can imagine, new learners of English could not easily understand. All in all, it is due to the fact that teacher autonomy is a key part of the Internationals approach that we were given time to discuss our concerns as teachers and we were able, ultimately, to create this binder system. The system is still in use today and a similar system has been adopted by San Francisco International, our second Bay Area sister International.

Another way that teachers have come together to create consistency across classrooms is through what we call our “Class Customs.” I remember visiting Prospect Heights International H.S. once and being impressed when students began to fill out a certain graphic organizer (called a K-W-L chart) without a single word of explanation from the teacher. The teacher had written a K-W-L chart on the board (what we Know, what we Want to know and what we’ve Learned). It was a twelfth grade history class. When I told the teacher I was impressed by their independence, the teacher said, “Well, they’ve been seeing the same chart since 9th grade. I actually was their 9th grade teacher and moved up with them each year.” While not every teacher has the opportunity to move up with his or her students, consistency across the class is clearly a good thing. When I returned to my school, I felt even more strongly that consistency was important, and I supported our school in our decision to create “Class Customs,” which were five types of graphic organizers that all teachers in the school made a commitment to use during the first month of school. By recognizing the importance of consistency for students and exerting our right to make school-wide decisions, we have improved the speed by which students can understand what they need to do in a lesson that includes one of these five “customs”. Rather than spend time trying to understand how to do something, students now have more time to focus on what they need to learn as a result of our commitment to identifying and discussing important issues among all teachers at the school and coming up with strategies to resolve them.

In the Internationals network, all teachers have the potential to influence the governance of their school, by discussing students on a team level, creating consistencies in procedures and curriculum schoolwide or teamwide, and by making suggestions about how the community can be improved. All of these examples illustrate how the fourth principle of the Internationals Approach, localized autonomy, is important at OIHS in helping teachers be empowered to make decisions. By encouraging teachers to make decisions on a schoolwide or team level, teachers gain valuable leadership skills and become more invested in the work that they do and, at least in my own case, feel more committed to continuing to work with a school where they can make change.

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The Interdisciplinary Team at the Internationals High Schools

May 5th, 2010

The fourth core principle of Internationals Network is Localized Autonomy. By linking autonomy and responsibility at every level within a learning community, all members of that community can contribute to their fullest potential. This week’s entry, written by Daria Witt, the Director of Academic Affairs at Internationals, describes the interdisciplinary team, one of the key aspects of localized autonomy in our schools.

Teachers at an Internationals High School work in interdisciplinary instructional teams. Each team has four to six teachers who teach a group of 75-100 students throughout the day and week. In the same way that students are heterogeneously grouped to work on collaborative projects, teachers are grouped heterogeneously in terms of experience, discipline, language background, and gender so that all bring different perspectives to the table. Teams meet regularly to plan, to do case management for individual students, and to provide feedback on one another’s curriculum.

These teams are the primary vehicle for professional development. In addition to working together on instructional issues, teachers receive professional development in addressing the social and affective needs of their students by hearing from their team members and discussing case management strategies with the guidance counselor linked to their team. Teams often decide together on an action research question they are interested in pursuing and then conduct the research, discuss the results, and make curricular modifications accordingly. Basing professional development in the teams enhances its relevance and impact because team members can discuss their own needs and those of their students, and search for answers to questions they are currently struggling with. Teachers’ minds are open to different disciplinary perspectives as they hear about the curriculum of their interdisciplinary colleagues and feedback on their own curriculum.

Teams are also the primary vehicle for leadership development. In most schools, particularly newer schools, each team member has a specific role to play on the team (in addition to his/her own disciplinary perspective). For example, in some schools each team has not only a team leader, but also a guidance point person (in addition to the guidance counselor), a professional development committee member (usually a school wide committee comprised of one representative from each team), and other roles which vary according to the school’s needs but might include teaching and learning, school environment, or student life. Through these roles, team members participate in a distributed governance structure and assume a leadership role in some aspect of the school.

What does a team meeting look like?
The schedule at an IHS is organized so that teams have time to meet. Teams are typically scheduled to have one or two official meetings a week – although many meet more often and have lunch together every day. Formal team meetings each week usually include one for curriculum planning and development and one for case management. Teams work on projects together in order to address the academic, social, and linguistic needs of their students. These projects may take several forms:

One team member brings in a project, activity guide, or plan for a project to get feedback. In some schools, teams use the “Tuning Protocol” to give one another feedback on the project. These discussions naturally lead team members to discuss what interdisciplinary connections they could be making in their own curriculum, what skills they might all want to work on or other ways that they can collaborate to support the academic and linguistic needs of their students.

All team members bring in samples of students work to examine. Teams may look at the work of students at varying proficiency or skill levels or at the work of a single student. They may discuss patterns they see across student work and across classes to then determine which skill(s) they can all work on developing in their classes to address the needs identified in the work. If they look at the work of a single student, they may look for patterns of strengths and needs across the curriculum and for ways to support that student in all classes.

Teams plan an interdisciplinary unit together. They discuss the theme, generate their essential questions, list the skills they want to address and the academic language they want to develop, and how to address all of these in their different disciplines.

Along with the guidance counselor, teams bring in anecdotal notes, student work, and other documentation on one student or a small group of students who may be struggling or have behavioral issues to discuss what is happening with that student, the progress he or she is making, and what is being done (or should be being done) across the team to address his/her needs. Some schools and teams use protocols such as the “Kid Talk” protocol. Teams regularly engage in inquiry projects to do action research into how a small struggling group of students are doing and what interventions are effective. Discussions always relate back to curriculum and how the team can make adjustments in the curriculum to better address what the students need.

Teams plan a field trip together, developing an activity guide for students to complete during the trip that addresses all of their disciplines

Teams develop common disciplinary and assessment procedures (in line with the school policies) that support the students in doing their best possible work. Teachers also develop common interventions for both disciplinary and academic difficulties. If a student is having a problem, they do not just send that student to the dean and expect him/her to deal with it. If a student doesn’t know how to read, he/she will not be removed to a resource room or placed in a lower tracked class until he/she learns a little more—the figures out how to adjust their own curriculum, what extra supports need to be brought into the classroom (or at lunchtime or after school), and how to engage with families and community organizations to provide all students with the supports they need to be successful.

Teams develop a budget for the materials and supplies they need during the year and develop a proposal they present to the school leadership.

As teachers work in teams, they develop the skills to create a collaborative classroom because they experience the collaborative structure themselves. They are given the autonomy to do their own programming, design their own curriculum and assessments, develop their own interventions, and use their own budgets in order to support their own development which in turn supports student achievement and leads to student success.

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Content Based English as a Second Language

May 2nd, 2010

This article is written by Nancy S. Dunetz, Ed.D., a founding teacher of The International High School at LaGuardia Community College, who now mentors and coaches at a variety of Internationals.

Language is a medium for communicating, for learning, for thinking. When youngsters are taught a second language without purpose, it is unlikely that the language will be learned very well.

Students need to be able to do more than greet people, negotiate their way through the supermarket, write and produce skits, and leave messages on answering machines. The cognitive/linguistic demands on students include analyzing data, making inferences, comparing and contrasting, predicting, drawing conclusions, and all the other linguistic tasks we require of mainstream students in content classes. Without the opportunity to engage in these tasks, students cannot develop the skills.

There are two types of language we need to address in teaching English: academic English and social English. Social English can develop informally through interaction with native speakers, and formally in a classroom setting. Academic English, however, must be developed in a classroom setting. The vocabulary, sentence structure, and style of academic English differ markedly from social English.

Often teachers of limited English proficient students use content areas (academic subjects such as social studies, science, mathematics) as a context for teaching language. Their lessons are organized around the linguistic points that are being taught, while the content is a vehicle for focusing on those linguistic points. The content is almost inconsequential. With such an approach, students don’t progress much beyond naming things or stating facts.

Content (data, concepts, ideas) exists apart from language, but language does not exist apart from content. Furthermore, language is more readily remembered when it has meaning and when it is in context. Content based English as a second language instruction means that language is an outgrowth of content – that by experiencing and learning new concepts, students extend their language base. Philosophically, it follows the idea that comprehension precedes language.

How then will students internalize the structure, syntax, and phonology of their new language? An experience-based curriculum, which enables the students to understand the concepts they are dealing with, will firmly support their English language acquisition. In the process of engaging in experiences and project development, they will be practicing structures that teachers and other students model. They will create and investigate hypotheses about how their new language functions. From time to time teachers might make brief explanations about the grammar of the new language. But, this is for the purpose of helping the students refine their language as opposed to using grammar to teach the language.

What English as a second language teachers can learn from good content teachers is to focus on concepts that are abstract and transcend curriculum areas, concepts such as power, control, and interdependence. For example, the concept of interdependence can be demonstrated by content examples about people in groups (governments, societies, teams, classes in school), about ecological phenomena (food chains, pollination), about mathematical principles. As the concept is examined in its multiple contexts, the students’ understandings are broadened to enable them to apply knowledge to new situations, thus engaging them in higher order thinking skills. Teachers shouldn’t use the vocabulary only to name a phenomenon, but to point out how the word varies across disciplines, and how the word is related to other words (How does “in” change the meaning of dependence? What about interdependence?)

Content teachers, on the other hand, can learn a great deal from English as a second language teachers. English as a second language teachers are masters at making information concrete. They know how to present material step by step. They know how to start at the beginning. Many teachers do not do this, because to them the beginning is where their preconceived curriculum begins, regardless of the group of students they have before them. When they take the time to discover where their students are, they often find they have to redefine the beginning. They have to start before the beginning.

Given the large population of immigrants in the United States, and the high degree of expertise that has developed over the past decades in educating them, school systems can no longer ignore the basic educational needs of English as a second language learners in their mainstream classes, placing the onus on the students to figure out the coursework on their own. Schools can no longer leave the job of developing the students’ English competence exclusively to English as a second language experts. Likewise, English as a second language teachers can no longer focus solely on English language development isolated from academic coursework.

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Learning English through Internationals’ Approach to Education

April 21st, 2010

This week Fior D’Aliza Rodriguez Quero, who graduated from The Brooklyn International High School in 2005 and from Brooklyn College in 2009, writes about learning English through content and the effect it has had on her life.

Linda Darling-Hammond once said, “A democratic education means that we educate people in a way that ensures they can think independently, that they can use information, knowledge, and technology, among other things, to draw their own conclusions.” I couldn’t think of a better quote to describe the style of educating and learning of the International high schools in New York City and California. As Ms. Darling-Hammond stated in the quote above, democratic education requires that both teachers and students learn; that is, teachers are not the ones who controls what they are teaching, but rather teachers encourage students to think on their own and to use the information around them to question it and keep searching for more. My experience at The Brooklyn International High School (BIHS) can be described as a never-ending one because, even after graduating from high school and going through Brooklyn College, I am still thirsty for knowledge.

I came to New York City at the age of thirteen and with very limited English skills. I was in a bilingual program in eighth grade (English and Spanish). My English did improve, especially in the reading and writing aspects, but not as much as it did when I participated in a summer intense English program at New York City Technical College where I spoke, wrote and read in English for two months, five days a week for about eight hours each day! As challenging and intimidating as it was, I give credit to this program because I improved my English skills tremendously and it made me more confident and prepared to start high school. The reason I mention this program is not only because it is effective but because it exposed to democratic education. My teachers were like guides and mentors who helped me not only to learn English but they were also there for me when I was confused, needed emotional support and encouragement to continue to learn new things everyday. And I can proudly say that I received the same experience with my teachers and peers at The Brooklyn International High School.

One of the wonderful things about the International high schools is the diversity of their students and staff. While I had the chance to learn about history, English, earth science, math, etc, I was also exposed to different cultures and ideas. And it was through this content integration—that is, a mixture of different ideas and information with different people—that I was able to improve my English skills greatly. Moreover, and surprisingly, I have been able to retain my own language while still learning English. Although I have a good foundation in the Spanish language, it also improved through tutoring other peers, practicing it at home, and translating English words/phrases to Spanish and vice-versa. As a result, this transfusion of knowledge and language between teachers and students resulted in empowering students to make independent, healthy and grounded choices for their wellbeing and those around them.

Maintaining a balance between Spanish and English has not necessarily been a conflict, but more like a challenge to always make it work. I graduated from Brooklyn College in December 2009 with a degree in sociology. My goal is to become a teacher and help as many people as I can, as my teachers helped me. I give a great deal of credit to my teachers and professors in college for inspiring me to become a teacher. But, most importantly, I give thanks to them because they believed me and always reminded me of my roots. I was respected because I am bilingual and not discriminated against as happens with many immigrant students.

One of the ways I have been able to maintain my Spanish is through tutoring and teaching. For instance, BIHS gave me the opportunity to teach for a year a group of ninth grade girls, sponsored by the organization called The Girls and Boys Projects. Their curriculum focuses on empowering boys and girls through knowing how to deal with different issues, including sexual harassment, puberty, sex education, health and nutrition, etc. In addition, I became a catechist for the church and I teach third graders about the Catholic church and its beliefs. Hence, it is possible to retain one’s language even while learning another language.

Overall, at BIHS I found a second family and many opportunities to grow personally and in my education. The friendships I formed with my classmates and teachers are still intact today. Furthermore, the internships I was able to do in my junior year opened doors to other amazing experiences and people who have served as mentors throughout the years, such as but not limited to people at City Hall Academy, the Girls and Boys Projects, Smith Barney, Inc, and Sadie Nash Leadership Project and among others. Therefore, learning English at BIHS was an empowering experience that helped me to grow as a person, as a student, and now as a sociologist.

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The Arts: Expressing Oneself Without Words

April 14th, 2010

This week’s post is written by Ann McCormack, the theater arts teacher at The Brooklyn International High School.

With all that our students have to accomplish before they can graduate with a New York State High School diploma, why even offer art classes? Why not double up on English classes? Or have special English conversation tutors?

Founding principal of BIHS, Sara Newman, explains her choice to include the Arts this way, “I wanted to have an art teacher because I wanted students to have a way to express themselves without having to use words.” Without a word of English, students could share their thoughts, their concerns, and their imaginations through artistic creations. Our current principal, Pam Taranto agrees: “…the arts give English language learners a practical and creative point of entry without having to rely on verbal language as the only mode of communication.” As an artist and a teacher, I have witnessed many moments of self-discovery and self-expression.

Example #1:
Nicolas arrives in my classroom well into the spring term. If he speaks any English, he’s not letting me know it. Even with the help of other native language speakers, it’s difficult to gather much information about his past experience. His eyes, when they meet mine, are apologetic for not knowing my language and seem to challenge me, “Can you really make this work?”

We’re in the midst of a messy and time-consuming project called, Making Masks from Literature when Nicolas arrives. My classes had recently read Macbeth and Frankenstein and The Picture of Dorian Gray. They had also attended productions of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and A Shogun Macbeth. Unfortunately, Nicolas had missed all of these scaffolds and had no clue as to what we were doing. He looked discouraged and helpless. He didn’t know where to look or what to do.

For the project, the students could choose any character from those pieces of literature to create their mask. A couple of students who shared Nicolas’ first language were working on characters from The Hunchback and enjoyed explaining the story and characters to him, demonstrating and acting it out whenever necessary. He chose Frollo, the villain of The Hunchback and silently set to work.

First, he drew the face of a man with evil eyes and a devilish beard. From the drawing, I could see that he had a basic understanding of the character, the plot, the setting, and the conflict. I showed him samples of the different steps of the project that I’ve kept from previous years. He kept nodding. He understood the process.

Building up the clay on the plastic mold, his Frollo had a strong nose, a little mouth and beady eyes. He was balding and had a pointed goatee. He covered his clay with several layers plaster of Paris wrap and set it to dry over several days. When it was dry, we removed it from the mold and mixed paint for the desired skin tone and hair color. The skin was pale and sickly and as he saw Frollo as an older character, his hair and beard were grey.

Nicholas' mask of Frollo

By the end of the project, Nicolas still wasn’t speaking much English but he had been quite successful with his mask project, expressing his academic knowledge creatively. The other students and I loved and praised Nicolas’ work and he was very proud. His work was, in fact, displayed as part of BIHS’ First Arts Expo at MetroTech last spring and at The Internationals Arts Gallery event at NYU in June. Not bad for a newcomer.

Example #2:
A few years ago Mamadou came to BIHS through the IRC. Perhaps because of his disability, he had been marginalized in his home country. His first language was an oral one and since he hadn’t been to a regular school, he couldn’t read in the country’s official language. He couldn’t read or write English and apparently had a serious sight problem as well. So, he had trouble staying in his seat and typically wanted to leave the classroom and, indeed, the building by about mid-day.

The other students began reading and acting out Romeo and Juliet aloud in class. A teaching artist from The Shakespeare Society taught us fencing moves and staged the opening fight scene. A dance teacher taught us an Elizabethan dance. Mamadou enjoyed the active group work but even then seemed to get distracted easily. He would turn away while we were reading to draw designs on the white board but at least he was staying with us.

Mamdou as one of the witches from Macbeth

One day as I was about to erase the board at the end of class, I saw that he had drawn six stick figures, swords pointed, facing six other stick figures with swords pointed. Over one group he’d written the name Romeo and over the other, the name Juliet. Pam says, “The arts serve as a bridge to support language development while providing students with multiple ways to communicate about content.” Mamadou had quietly found a way to communicate that he understood.

Example #3:

Ishrat is a young woman from Pakistan. She was very ambivalent about coming to school and so was absent for the first  six weeks. When she did arrive she was very quiet and completely veiled. Somehow having her face covered seemed to be a barrier to conversation.  Some of her classmates seemed to reticent about speaking to her but her eyes peered out saying, “Get to know me! You might be surprised what you find.” I was surprised but delighted when she was eager to act the role of Lady Macbeth. She chose the monologue when Lady Macbeth receives the news from her husband and begins her wicked journey.

Ishrat as Lady Macbeth reads a letter from her husband.

One day while we were rehearsing in class, Ishrat found a donated prom dress on the costume rack in my room.  I turned around and Ishrat was wearing her Lady Macbeth costume: a lovely white and pink prom gown. She had placed it on over her black robe so that her Lady Macbeth also wore a hijab and niqab.

She did a beautiful job with the role during the performance. It turned out that the quiet, veiled newcomer had excellent oral English skills and loved to read aloud and act. Ishrat was able to establish herself though this project and the class got to see her in a wonderful new light.

Final words:
Each art teacher within the International Network, and the many other teachers who choose to incorporate art (drawing, rap, poetry, video, etc) into their content area, have seen our students benefit from, often thrive through, the arts. To any teacher who may be seeking ways to incorporating arts in your classroom, your colleagues, arts teachers and others alike, can help you get started. There are many professional development opportunities with a museum or a theater. There are arts organizations that will come into your classroom to lead workshops in your content area. I, for instance, came to Brooklyn International in 2003 as a teaching artist with East River Theatre Company and got hooked on the Internationals’ approach and here I am writing this INHS blog entry.

* The other arts teachers at Brooklyn International are Susan Handwerker, visual arts, Christopher Wilson, Music/Media Arts, and Kia DeCou, Literacy Through Photography and Bookmaking.

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Interns at Internationals

March 31st, 2010

Every spring semester, Internationals has a student intern from one of our New York schools. This post was written by Sharon Lungrin, COO and CFO of the Internationals Network for Public Schools, who works closely with each year’s intern. In this post she talks about the internship program in general and one intern, Mariama Bah, in particular.

The ultimate goal of the Internationals Network for Public Schools is to ensure that all recent immigrant English Language Learners have access to a quality high school education. As a staff, each day we use our diverse expertise to work to this end. We organize professional development events for our teachers, maintain our knowledge management system and advocate for the Internationals approach at the district and national level. All of this work is rewarding but does not put us in direct contact with our ultimate customers, our students.

Each spring, I look forward to having an Internationals’ student intern in our office. For me, internship is a chance to directly connect with our students. Our interns bring fresh, new energy to our office and allow us to collaborate as a team to directly impact one student. During internship time, routine tasks take on new meaning as they are explained to a young person who has never worked in an office before. Interns usually work across functional areas. Since we know that internship is an important opportunity for students to make connections to what they are learning in school, we work hard to find a balance between routine office tasks and projects that will provide opportunities for students to communicate with staff and engage in deep thinking. Interns have helped us to improve our IT infrastructure, update our knowledge management system, plan professional development events and of course, answer the phones, file and make copies.

To date, we have had six wonderful interns (Ibrahim, Astrid, Jean, Yurij, Mohammed, Jack, and Ricky) from four of our schools. All of these students have brought something special to our team. And of course, there are always the unplanned connections that develop along the way. For me, this is the mentoring relationship that I have developed with Mariama Bah, a graduate of Brooklyn International. Marima and her family fled Sierra Leone when she was eight years old and lived in Guinea for three years before coming to the United States. Back in 2006 when I met Mariama she was working hard to learn high school academic content while developing her literacy skills. (Mariama missed a lot of school due to the civil war in her home country.) She was determined to continue her education beyond high school even though at the time this was not what her family thought was best for her. Mariama’s story touched me personally and I have been delighted to help her to reach her goals.

Today, Mariama is a student at Kingsborough Community College. She plans to transfer to the Fashion Institute of Technology to study fashion merchandising. Mariama and a few classmates from Brooklyn International have also started a mentoring program for African girls at two International high schools. Here is what Mariama has to say about her life-long learning experience at Internationals:

I did not do my internship at Internationals. My formal internship at a fashion boutique was not great. One day my friend Ibrahim Diallo, who was interning at Internationals, asked me if I would like to help him at his internship. I asked him what he did there and what type of help did he need. Ibrahim told me that there was a professional development event coming up and they have a lot of paper work to organize. I decided to help. In the process of helping Ibrahim, I met a lot of well educated and friendly people like Claire E. Sylvan, Sharon Lungrin, Daria Witt, Janine Martyr, Anna Krasowski, and Thomas Thomson . Ever since my junior year in high school, I have worked part-time for Internationals. All of the staff at Internationals have helped me in so many ways in my time of need and I am grateful to all of them. Working at the International Network is one of the great experiences I have had. I am learning a lot about using Excel, being organized and filing. In the future, I know this will benefit me, no matter which career I end up choosing.

I would like to close with a special thanks to all the internship coordinators for finding internship sites and ensuring that our students have a meaningful experiential learning experience. Thank you!!

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