The Queens High School of Teaching

The Queens High School Of Teaching, Liberal Arts and the Sciences (QHST) (26Q566) is a public high school in Bellerose, New York located on the Glen Oaks Campus, a sprawling 32-acre landscaped campus, which contains QHST and two other neighboring 'kindergarten-8th' grade schools: P.S./I.S. 266 and P.S./I.S. 208. It is one of the only schools in New York that has a campus, which is the largest public school campus ever built in the United States.

It's three Small Learning Communities are named "Emerson," "Freire," and "Montessori." The school opened in Fall 2003. It currently serves grades 9-12 under principal Eric Contreras, but originally Nigel Pugh.

History and Origin

The school was originally planned as a year-round school with short vacations throughout the year, but this plan was later dismissed, and the school now adheres to a standard academic schedule.

The original plan was to enroll 300 freshmen and gradually accept more students each year. Months before its opening 60 sophomores were admitted as well. At this time Principal Nigel Pugh separated the school into four "small learning communities" (SLCs) to simulate the experience of attending a smaller school.

mall Learning Communities

Each SLC has its own teachers and students in each community mostly attend classes only within their small learning community. Some classes – e.g. art, music, Spanish culture, Spanish - are "cross-community" meaning that students from different communities attend the same class. Montessori and Emerson were the two biggest communities, having few seniors and an average number of juniors, sophomores, and freshmen, while Freire only had juniors, sophomores and freshmen. But this changed as the class of '07 has seniors for all its communities.

SLCs each have a student government, with the student governments from all communities working together to form the United Student Government (a.k.a. USGO). Each community hosts events of its own, but members of the other student governments help the host carry out the events. Some school-wide events are planned by all student governments in conjunction.

Lockdown

Death threats

On December 13, 2007, teachers and students at the Queens High School of Teaching and the two other schools P.S./I.S. 266 and P.S./I.S. 208 found themselves locked down by police after an assistant principal at the high school found a letter threatening eight students with death in his mailbox shortly before 2 p.m.

The New York City Police Department were notified by 2:30 p.m., shortly before the schools normal dismissal time. Police locked down the schools to search for the potental gunman. By 4 p.m., the search was over after police caught two students (both girls), who attend the school, which were later taken into custody. [Dum Girls !] [http://www.monticohort1.blogspot.com]

Bomb threat

BTW . . . these are real facts!

On January 2, 2008, the schools found themselves in yet another lockdown after someone from the high school found a letter in the boys 4th floor bathroom stating that a bomb is triggered to go off at 1:00 p.m.

The New York City Police Department locked down the schools till the Bomb Squad arrived slowly on scene around 4 p.m., they searched the second floor C wing of the school finding no trace of a bomb inside the school.

External links

* [http://schools.nyc.gov/SchoolPortals/26/Q566/default.htm Official Website]