- The International High School (New York)
Articleissues
cleanup = April 2008
orphan = April 2008
unreferenced = April 2008
wikify = April 2008chool History
Former Principal Eric Nadelstern founded The International High School at LaGuardia Community College in 1985 as a joint venture by the New York City Board of Education and the Board of Higher Education of the City of New York. In 1999, IHS became one of the first charter schools in New York City. The school has been designated as an Academic Excellence Project and has twice been cited as a Center of Excellence for the teaching of English communication arts.
Curriculum
IHS curriculum requirements meet or exceed all New York State Education Department standards for a high school diploma. All classes are heterogeneous (mixed) by language, achievement, grade level, and age. Classes are structured around the development of thematic projects in cooperative learning groups. Students work in depth, both collaboratively and independently.Students fulfill graduation requirements by passing year-long interdisciplinary programs incorporating the Humanities, Math/Science/Technology, and Applied Learning. There are six interdisciplinary programs based on such themes as:
- American Dream: Bridges to Reality
- Connections
- Inquiry and Action
- Origins, Growth, and Structures
- Projects and Adventures in New York City
- The World Around Us/World of MoneyApplied Learning Opportunities
Interdisciplinary programs give students a variety of opportunities to apply what they learn in the classroom to real life situations, such as working with architects to build bridges or environmentalists to clean up polluted bodies of ware. Two special programs include internship and community service.
Internship: Some teams offer career education internships where students explore careers they are interested in while attending high school. During an internship, students take two classes and for the rest work for various organizations and companies. Internship sites include government agencies, big and small businesses, and hospitals.
Community Service: Another team offers students an opportunity to develop a community service project in class and put it into practice. In the past students have researched and presented material on teen issues and developed a website.
Graduation Certification
Students graduate when they have successfully completed a minimum of four years of interdisciplinary study and have been certified by a panel including faculty, students, and representatives from the educational community.
Each student is sponsored by a faculty mentor who assists the student in assembling a portfolio of performance-based assessment tasks drawn from their course work and prepares a presentation. The student may include college course work, and other evidence of growth and mastery as part of their petition for graduation. This panel will determine if the student’s progress meets or exceeds the student performance standards for graduation in New York State, and merits graduation from The International High School.Certification for graduation is based on a consensus of the panel and is also subject to successful completion of course work. Graduation panels are scheduled during January, June, and August.Graduation Portfolio
Over 90% of IHS students graduate and go on to two or four year colleges. In addition to CUNY, many of our graduates continue to study and complete their college degrees with partial or full financial aid, including scholarships at many of the top universities in the country. These include:
Bard University, Barnard University, Bennington College, Brandeis University, Clark University, Cooper Union, Cornell University, DePauw University, Georgetown University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Middlebury College, New York University, Rice University, Skidmore College, SUNY at Albany, SUNY at Binghamton, SUNY at Stony Brook, University of Michigan, Vanderbilt University.
References
External links
* [http://ihsnyc.org Official Website]
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