Our Program:
The Internationals Approach
Our schools provide a safe, supportive environment that prepares immigrant youth for college and the world.
Close-Knit, Supportive Communities
For our students, teenagers who have been uprooted at an important transition from childhood to adulthood, our schools are a second home where they can learn a new language and culture, while they prepare academically for college and life.
Student Success
Our schools are close-knit, supportive communities. Because our schools are small - they range in size from 300 and 470 students (at full capacity), and are comprised of students who share a common experience of immigrating to a new country, we can focus on our students' needs: to learn the language and culture of their new country while they also learn rigorous academic content. We recognize and cherish the diverse knowledge and experience students bring into our school community. We build on each student's existing strengths, and use these strengths to help the students develop their new language and adapt to their new culture while preparing them academically to go on to college. By combining significant personalized support with rigorous academic demands, we provide an environment that prepares students for the world of college and work.
Our students' success is a direct result of our teachers' collective and individual commitment, skills and professionalism and the creation of a tight-knit community in which everyone is focused on ensuring that each student achieves to his or her highest potential. We use a variety of measures to determine our success from portfolios of student work to course pass and attendance rates to standardized tests and graduation results.
Educational Design
All International High Schools have a learner-centered, project based, interdisciplinary curriculum that incorporates performance-based assessment. Within our classrooms, heterogeneous groups of students work collaboratively on content-based tasks in a language rich environment.
Teachers are organized into teams that develop thematically based courses of study. Teams are given both the freedom and responsibility to design instruction for a small group of students and to promote their linguistic, cognitive and social progress. All teachers consider themselves teachers of language as well as content.