Since its founding in 1985, International High School has established itself as one of the premier schools for immigrant students. The staff have designed an innovative, student-centered program based on interdisciplinary study, a commitment to teaching challenging academic content to English language learners, and a significant use of career education. This exciting program continues to evolve and grow, and its graduates continue to experience tremendous success in language, academic and personal growth.

For many people, both in this country and abroad, the name of New York City conjures up images of the statue of Liberty, opening the city doors to immigrants and visitors from all corners of the world. The city has been one of the most active ports of entry for people wishing to establish themselves in this country, and consequently, it has always been associated with a rich variety of languages, ethnicities, customs and a general openness to difference. This ethnic and linguistic variety has provided the perfect setting for International High School, located in the borough of Queens.

The School

International High School (IHS) has become synonymous with innovation, high standards and success for its exclusively immigrant population. When people hear about the International High School, where over 90% of the students pass the statewide Regents Competency Tests, and 90% of the graduates go on to postsecondary education, they imagine an exclusive and comfortable preparatory school for privileged foreign students. Nothing could be further from the truth. Over 75% of the students enrolled at International qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The school does not have a building for itself, instead occupying several classrooms in the basement of La Guardia Community College. However, these factors which could initially surprise an uninitiated visitor are counterbalanced by the energy, enthusiasm, esprit de corps, and involvement that one continuously observes at the school from teachers and students alike. During the 1994-95 academic year, International High School had 450 students who had immigrated from 56 countries and who spoke 40 different languages. The biggest representation of students comes from Spanish-speaking countries, followed by Asian block countries represented by China, Hong Kong, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Enrollment at the high school reflects the geopolitics of the moment, with many students coming from places in turmoil (New York Times, 12/28/93). When the school opened in 1985, there were only a few students from Eastern Europe; in 1995, the presence of Eastern European students had increased to third place.

International High School, part of the Alternative School System of New York City, is a joint venture of the New York City Board of Education and the City University of New York. During its brief existence, IHS has repeatedly earned recognition. In 1986 International and its partner, the City University of New York, received the award for the Best New High School/College Collaboration in the nation from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. In 1989 the National Council of Teachers of English gave the school its award for excellence in English/Language Arts Instruction, and in 1990 the same organization named International a Center of Excellence for At-Risk Students. In 1991 the American Association of Higher Education gave the school its award for Outstanding High School/College Collaboration. In 1992 it received a Democracy grant from RJR Nabisco and a National Academic Excellence award from the U.S. Department of Education.

Every year 92 to 95% of IHS's recent graduates apply and are accepted to college. Two thirds attend four-year colleges; one third attend two-year colleges. Eighty percent of those going on to four-year institutions attend City University of New York and 20% enroll in state or private colleges. Some of the colleges International alumnae attended in 1994 include Stony Brook, New Paltz, Alfred, Buffalo College, the University of Washington at Seattle, Bard, Skidmore, New York University, Pace, Barnard, Vanderbilt, Clark and St. John's. These students received four year financial aid packages totaling $750,000 (Twenty First Century Schools, pp. 26-27).

Since IHS occupies space at La Guardia Community College, nothing can be left behind in the classrooms at the end of the day, because college classes occupy the same premises in the evening. This condition, which would discourage teachers in other settings, does not diminish the spirit of the school and its staff: they have turned around conditions that under normal circumstances would be considered stumbling blocks, or at least distractions, and have made strengths out of them. If being housed at La Guardia Community College does not give the school a permanent campus of its own, it offers students and teachers many other advantages. The high school students are surrounded by college students who serve as role models and have the opportunity to interact with them on a daily basis. The ethnic composition of the college is also very diverse, with about 30% Latino students, 20 % Eastern European, 30% Asian, and 20% Anglo American or from other ethnicities.

The mission of the International High School is to make it possible for each of its students to develop the linguistic, cognitive, and cultural skills necessary for success in high school, college, and beyond. The principles that undergird the program, as stated in main school documents, are:

1. Limited English proficient students require the ability to understand, speak, read and write English with near-native fluency to realize their full potential within an English-speaking society.

2. In an increasingly interdependent world, fluency in a language other than English must not be viewed as a handicap, but rather as a resource for the student, the school and the society.

3. Language skills are most effectively learned in context and embedded in a content area.

4. The most successful educational programs are those which emphasize high expectations coupled with effective support systems.

5. Attempts to homogeneously group students in an effort to make instruction more manageable, preclude the way in which individuals learn best, that is, from each other.

6. The carefully planned use of multiple learning contexts in addition to the classroom (e.g., learning centers, career internship sites, field trips), facilitates language acquisition and content area mastery.

7. Career education is a significant motivational factor for adolescent learners.

8. The most effective instruction takes place when teachers actively participate in the school decision making process, including instructional program design, curriculum development and materials selection. (Project Propel Handbook, p. 2).

These principles are evident in every day life at the school. One hears a variety of languages spoken in and out of class, but one also hears English in classes and in corridors, and as one eavesdrops, the topics of conversation strike the listener as being far more serious and elaborated than the interactions one usually hears in school halls. For example, I observed three students, one of them Polish and two Latin Americans, discussing the Cuban embargo. One Latino was a Castro sympathizer, while the other one opposed his actions, and the Polish student, wanting to become better informed, kept probing both of them with extremely critical questions.

In order to be admitted to International High School, a student needs to have lived in the United States fewer than four years and to score below the 21st percentile on the Language Assessment Battery. Once admitted, the student remains at the high school until graduation, since there are no exit procedures other than graduation. The school does not have a transitional program to promote youth into other settings. Students who, in other schools, would be mainstreamed into English only classes because they have achieved a high level of English proficiency remain at IHS and become key actors in the functioning of a highly interactive distributed expertise model, in which they now can be the "more capable" linguistic peers in a Vygotskyan fashion.

Some of the students arrive with low literacy skills in their own language and with little prior schooling; a few are beyond the traditional age for high school. Others come with strong academic backgrounds in their own language, but with limited proficiency in English. Still others have transferred from traditional schools where they were not doing well academically or personally. Most of these students had heard about the school through friends, relatives, or their counselors. It is a popular school, with a waiting list for admission that works on a "first come first served basis." Once admitted, students are told that they will spend at least two years at school before graduation, since it is strongly felt that it will take them that long to adjust to the system and the language (interview, David Hirschy, 5/15/95).

By the time students graduate comes, they have completed their credits, including a half-day work internship conducted during three academic quarters, and 75% of them have taken one or more college courses. But, more importantly, they have learned to become autonomous learners through experiential, metacognitive and collaborative learning. They have also learned to appreciate rich linguistic and cultural diversity and to openly discuss their role in such a society and their possibilities for the future.

International High School was founded by a group of like-minded teachers under the visionary leadership of Eric Nadelstern, the principal. All teachers had previously taught in more traditional schools and had had immigrant students in their classes. Dissatisfied with the way things had worked elsewhere, they shared a common vision of what was possible and decided to work to establish this possibility.

All teachers at International are firm believers in bilingualism as an individual gift and a societal resource; they also believe that immigrant students can not only learn English through engagement in subject matter taught in that language, but can also, if provided with the appropriate support, excel academically. In contrast to most other high school teachers, the staff at IHS is not interested in perfecting their specialization in one area, but are eager to extend their expertise beyond their original subjects. After all, interdisciplinary teaching requires them to continuously learn with their peers in order to facilitate learning for their students in those areas. As Aaron Listhaus confided in the introduction to his self-evaluation:

According to the National Alliance for Restructuring Education, maximum learning, as defined by meaningful retention as well as personal interest, takes place when one actually teaches the learning to someone else. Thus I have learned more this year about teaching and learning from working with my students, team members and student teachers than I have ever before. This year in general and this cycle to a larger degree, I have been team teaching across disciplines with both team members and student teachers. Because of the collaboration, the observation of differing styles and personal dynamics, dealing with subjects as outwardly disparate as Art, Mathematics. Biology, Chemistry, Global Studies, Linguistics and Language Arts, I have been a part of many diverse learning situations. (Listhaus, 5/17/95)

Teachers at IHS have developed a process for peer selection, support, and evaluation that strongly resembles the processes they engage their students in as they work through the different clusters (described below). This process is designed to foster and support professional growth on the part of the teacher through self and peer evaluation.

The design of instruction at International has been evolving since its inception. Initially, although there was a strong belief in the value of crossdisciplinary work to enhance teaching/learning at the school, classes were divided along disciplinary lines, and the links between disciplines were tenuous. Students had 35 to 40 minute period classes, seven courses a day. For the 1988-89 academic year, IHS adopted a new schedule based on a 70-minute instructional period. The schedule change was positive and created the possibility for serious cross-disciplinary teaching.

The staff at International, believing that the departmentalization of our secondary schools has led to a fragmentation of learning, have created interdisciplinary units to unify and connect knowledge while helping to build small learning communities. Planning for these units or "clusters" has also benefited the teachers, who plan their instruction collaboratively based on their students' interests and needs. This interdisciplinary approach has been so successful that the faculty of International has decided to "reorganize the curriculum of the entire school around interdisciplinary thematic study" (p. 10, PROPEL). These clusters, listed below, have been carefully designed so that they provide students with the credits and topics they will need to graduate and to pass the Regents competency tests.

Table 4. Interdisciplinary Clusters and Their Component Disciplines at International High School, 1995.

The first class I visited at International was the Global Studies component of the Structures interdisciplinary cluster. Students were completing a two week research project on "World Religions," which had been developed by Karen Reuter and Brenda Lapley, two student teachers from the New School for Social Research in collaboration with Charles Glassman, Elyse Rivin, and Aaron Listhaus, IHS teachers. The project combines global studies and art. At the beginning of the project, students had been asked to select a religion unfamiliar to them and to become experts on that religion; they had also been asked to create or recreate a religious artifact from this religion and to explain in an oral presentation the significant features and history of the object. They had conducted the research project in dyads. Each student had gone to a museum that exhibited religious artifacts to support the activity and to help contextualize the research. Students had not been given specific questions to answer but had been told that they were free to study any aspect of the religion that triggered their curiosity. Some students chose to focus on the historical events leading to the birth and evolution of the religion, while others chose to learn about current issues, practices, and customs. To kick off the project, students watched scenes from Little Buddha, and then in groups of four brainstormed questions that could serve as a guide for their research. The questions were gathered together, and distributed to the class to provide support to students who needed some more direction. Some of the questions they generated were: is there really a god? Why do people pray? What is the religion's creation story? Has the religion changed over time? Does the religion have hope?

A few days before the project was completed, students were asked to work with a partner who had been studying a different religion and to interview each other about their research. This interview served two main purposes: to inform every student in class about a religion they had not researched and to assess informally the quality of each students' work. Questions that were not clearly explained or that remained unanswered could now be asked to help limit even more the scope of the work or to provide further lines of inquiry for the remaining days.

When I arrived, the last day of the second week, students were preparing for the final presentation, which was to take place during the sixth period that day. The student pairs sat at tables of six, sharing their findings with other classmates who had studied different religions. At the table I joined, a student who had studied Islam started his presentation by explaining his reasons for researching this religion. Looking at a chart of important religions in the world, he had realized that Islam was the second most popular religion in the world after Christianity, and he decided that he needed to know more about it. He had also heard about a movement called "The Nation of Islam" and wanted to know whether this referred to the religion or to a political party. He went on to explain what he had learned in the process, while everybody listened intently. The only time a voice from outside the circle intervened was to remind eager students that they should reserve their questions for the end of each presentation. Four groups were sharing their studies at the same time, and the concentrated attention at each circle indicated that everybody was thoroughly involved in the process. As questions came up, students responded to them by providing the requested information, or by saying that their study had not concentrated on the issues addressed by the questions and restating the focus of their research.

The culminating activity of the project, conducted during the sixth period, was an informal conversation held in another small group so students could learn about other religions and about religion in general. This time at each table five or six students sat with an adult -- a teacher, a student teacher, a teacher aide or a visitor -- with their artifacts, ready to engage in a discussion. These conversations clearly revealed what students had learned during their research projects. Although students had their carefully constructed written reports with them, they could not rely on them for their initial presentation or during the discussion. As Aaron Listhaus explained:

...they had to rely solely upon what they had remembered and what they had remembered was what was important to them. Because this conversation was spontaneous and since we had allotted a double period for the event, those students who might have been nervous about speaking extemporaneously to a small group had the time to relax and prepare what they had wanted to say. I believe that this method of assessment is accurate and fair, while supporting the particular needs of each student. By the end of the conversation, each student felt relaxed and felt that they had demonstrated what they had learned and how hard they had worked. (Listhaus, personal communication, May 1995)

The written part of the project consisted of a report, an essay, or a poster. The only instructions had been to demonstrate what they had learned and use their own words.

Several aspects of the World Religion project make it especially enticing for students and help them have access to, and become engaged in, higher order learning:

• Choice: At the beginning of the project students were given ample time and resources to find a religion that would really interest them and that would therefore sustain their enthusiasm and hard work through the two weeks of the project.

• Focus and Building from Prior Knowledge: Once a religion was chosen, students collaboratively generated questions that could guide their research. For those students who already had a focus, this helped sharpen it, and for those students who had not selected an area of interest to pursue, this brainstorming activity provided them with possible avenues of engagement.

• Collaboration: A large portion of the research was conducted in dyads, which allowed for students to support each other's learning, both conceptually and linguistically, as they engaged in purposeful activities that for them had meaning beyond the mere learning of English as a second language. At other times, the students worked in groups of four or five, which led to the sharing and refinement of understandings. During these interactions, the atmosphere in the classroom was supportive rather than competitive. All students participated orally; all of them took notes. There were no simplistic role divisions that maximized learned for some while restricting it for others.

• Validation of all languages: Although it was clearly understood by all that English needs to be developed by all students, it was equally clear that other languages were equally important in the construction and negotiation of meaning. Indeed, once in a while, students used their native languages to discuss, clarify, or expand ideas related to the project.

• Distributed expertise: Students were asked to become experts at a religion of their choice and throughout the development of the project, opportunities were planned so they could communicate their developments to their peers in order to share their expertise and receive feedback. Research was a vehicle for establishing meaningful conversations about focused, common themes of interest that allowed all students to share their emerging knowledge and contribute to everybody's understandings.

• Emphasis on quality, in-depth work: By the end of the project all students had gained in-depth knowledge of one religion and had had ample opportunities to assess their development of this expertise, refining and strengthening the focus of their research.

• Heterogeneity: Students were free to choose their teammates within certain parameters that were shared and understood by all. As Natalia, a Puerto Rican student, told me:

When a student is new to English, and needs more support, partners come from their same language background so that they can help them understand the intricacies of a text. As students become more adept in English, it becomes more important to work with students from other language backgrounds so that they have to use their English.

At other times students form groups to share different types of expertise. In general there were "high and varied expectations for each individual (and) creative support systems (that) aid students in accomplishing these expectations" (Project PROPEL Handbook, p. 20). The final written product, for example, could be a report, an essay, or a poster. This was left for the students to choose, but the variety provided students with less fluency in English an opportunity to demonstrate their understandings through less extensive written discourse. Students could also hand in an essay written in another language, if there was an adult available at the school to read that language.

• Multidisciplinary focus: As students worked to produce oral and written presentations of their work, they were engaged in finding historical patterns that underlie the many religions of the world. Their religious objects provided a way of contextualizing and then comparing their their understandings of similarities and differences in the way religions are structured. In other classes -- science, literature, and math -- students would also look at the persistence and suspension of similar patterns through other topics and disciplines. The theme allowed students to analyze and grasp the connections that run through what otherwise might seem like unrelated issues.

Three responses to Thousand Pieces of Gold

To highlight how International maintains high expectations for all learners at all levels of English proficiency, I have included three extracts from students' responses to an assignment on Thousand pieces of gold, a novel that constitutes one of the literature components in the World of Money cluster, which also incorporates American studies, mathematics and science. These excerpts illustrate three levels of attainment in terms of English language development and in the ability to structure critical essays based on literary pieces. Multiple kinds of products are accepted since everybody's proficiency in English varies, but they all have access the same text.

Monty

Part I. Brief summary of the book (1-9)

Lo que esta historia nos relata es la vida del pueblo chino desde el año 1865 hasta 1872. En esta época la mujer estaba totalmente discriminada. El libro nos narra la vida de una mujer en particular, Lalu, quien era una muchacha trabajadora, a pesar de las leyes de ese tiempo que decían que las mujeres no podían trabajar.

Despues de eso llegaron los bandidos ...

(Translation: This story is a narrative about the life of the Chinese people from the year 1865 until 1872. At this time women were totally discriminated against. The book tells the story of one of those women, Lalu, a hard working girl in spite of the laws of the time that stated that women could not work.

After this the bandits arrived...)

Part II. Analysis of the theme

The position of women in the economy and society

La posición de la mujer en ese tiempo en la economía: La mujer no juega un papel importante porque mientras el marido trabaja ella espera el dinero para realizar actividades. Ellas no podían trabajar en nada porque en el pueblo chino de antes se decía que el hombre era el que debía mantener el hogar. En ese tiempo el machismo de los hombres de china era tan fuerte que solo les permitían a las mujeres ser amas de casa. En resumen, la mujer no jugó un papel importante en la sociedad.

(Translation: Position of women in the economy at the time: Women did not play an important role because while husbands worked, they had to wait for money in order to perform their activities. They could not work for money because ancient Chinese people believed that it was athe man's role to support the home. At that time the machismo of Chinese men was so strong that women were only allowed to be housewives. To summarize, women did not play an important role in society.)

...

"The farm is my concern, not yours. I will hear no more about it." (McCunn. 1981, p.17)

Cuando el padre de Lalu usó todo su dinero en esa gran cosecha y lo perdió todo solo por no hacer un alto para escuchar a ...

(Translation: When Lalu's father used all of his money in the big harvest, and lost it all just because he did not stop to listen to ...)

Notice the carefully structured sentences in Spanish which indicate high-level literacy and analysis of the book. Notice, also, that Monty uses quotes, which by necessity are in English and show he understands what he is reading in his commentary.

The next piece was done by a student at an intermediate level of proficiency in English; we see in her text a developing sense for English discourse.

Rosa

Part I. This story about the girl life. Her name was Lalu. She live in northern China. They work in farm. Her parents had three children. She was first the daughter. It happened 1880.

When Lalu was young her father try to make good money. He plant winter wheat. He could not successed.

When bandits come Lalus father sold her for two bags of seeds. Her life was distroy. Could she depend some one. Who take care her rest of life...?

Chapter 1

"Lalu leaped to her feet... for a moment, she tollered on her little four inch bound feet." McCunn 1981, 14)

This quote taken from chapter one, from where we come to know that her feet bound to keep in four inch Lalu shaped.

Lalus mother try to help make four inch legs because it was chines tradition. Women could not walk faster than man. When Lalus feet banding she cannot work properly. She leaped her feet when she walk. She was shaking that makes the chickens that pecked and scratched in the dirt around her, sitting them to a loud squaheking.

Women cannot work on the field. Women position less than man. They have to work in the home. They treat the women like a slave. It was bad method. Women have to work in the house and take care the baby.

The women position of economy was not good. They could not do anything whatever they want

The final excerpt comes from a student who normally would be classified as an advanced ESL student:

Malgorzata

Part I.

Thousand Pieces of Gold is a novel about the life of a chinese girl named Lalu. The story begins in the eighties of the nineteenth century in a small village of China.

In the first part of the novel Lalu's father, a poor farmer, lost all the family money taking a great risk -planting winter wheat. As a result Lalu was afraid her father would sell her. She desperately wanted to stay with her family so she convinced her father to let her work on the fields like a man. Her feet were unbinded which was against the Chinese tradition.

After five years, however, a group of bandits came to the town. Lalu's father was forced to sell her, otherwise he might get killed. The family could not survive without him. Lalu was sold for two bags of soybeans.

Lalu was driven by the horde of outlaws. she tried to escape, but she was not successful. In a city she was purchased for an extremely high price by a person who would take her to America.

Part II

One of the most important themes in the book was gold. Gold meant money -in whatever form it was, it was essential for survival. Lalu's life would not be like it was if the financial situation of the family were different.

After Nathoy, Lalu's father, lost the family fortune the neighbors gossiped:

"Her father was going to sell her, ..., for if her father did not pay the land tax, he would be sent to prison and whithout him, the family would starve." (McCunn. 1981, p. 24)

Students at International take a three-year internship sequence as part of the Personal and Career Development program, which is designed to help them broaden their views of themselves in society. The internship also makes them aware of the options available in their future lives; it does not prepare them for a specific trade or career, as most vocational program do. Instead, they take three courses, each followed by an internship, an off-site field experience. Through the duration of the 12-week internship cycle, students spend 14 hours per week over a four-day period at their internships, and they return to school each day to follow their course work for half a day. On the fifth day students attend an internship seminar (PROPEL, p. 123).

Work internships are important because they not only smooth the transition from school to work, but actually make school relevant by providing students with real purposes for using English and by enabling them to apply the critical skills they have developed in class. Of course, being in New York City helps because of the great variety of internship possibilities the City offers. Students I interviewed were doing their internships in the airline industry (one was interested in becoming a pilot), in hospitals, in schools, in law offices, and so on. Galina, a teacher aide from Russia, had visited the office where two Chinese students were doing their internships. She told me that the girls were "very highly praised" by office personnel and the supervisors.

As in many other schools, International provides university students working on their teaching credentials, and/or on Masters degrees, the opportunity to conduct their internships in the program. Student teachers at IHS attend different universities, such as Columbia, Hunter College, NYU, and The New School for Social Research. Interns at the first three universities spend part of the day at the school for part of one semester. Student teachers from The New School for Social Research, however, spend 15 hours a week at IHS for the first part of the year, observing and becoming acquainted with the system; then, starting in February, they spend the whole day at International until the end of the high school year, in mid June, although their own university classes finish much earlier. This has allowed for a very special relationship to develop with these teachers in training -- teachers at International are part of the teaching staff at The New School for Social Research and they teach courses or workshops and supervise their student teachers.

Unlike most other student-teacher arrangements in which a hierarchical relationship exists between a "master" teacher and the student teacher, the work that takes place between teachers and student teachers at International High school is collaborative and symmetrical. Student teachers work as teams with classroom teachers, partaking of all the responsibilities: teaching, counseling, meeting in various committees, contributing to the development of curricula. They do so not as apprentices, but as members of the community of teachers as learners that IHS fosters. As Charles Glassman commented during one of several conversations:

a lot of the staff development we do has come out of our student teachers. They are taking classes and they know what is current. I have been teaching for 30 years and I am not all that current, but these students have a lot of ideas on how to do things. We have found this very valuable. They have moved us (Interview, 5/16/95).

Glassman's statements were corroborated by several other teachers on different occasions, and by my observations during the three days I spent at International.

Clearly, International High School has been able to design an innovative program that breaks with many of the traditional approaches to secondary education; they have dispensed with the departmental approach to knowledge with their interdisciplinary units and the concomitant collaboration among teachers, including even students teachers' input. They have created exciting theme-based curricula --that challenges traditional notions about the sequencing of topics and courses-- to engage their students and offer them access to a variety of academic worlds. And they have made education relevant by linking it directly with a series of work internships that help students learn about post-graduate options in concrete ways. International High School truly demonstrates what can happen when educators move beyond traditional educational approaches and create a program designed solely with the needs of immigrant students as its central concern.

One of the lessons I learned from IHS is the strength and cohesion which can be occur in smaller schools when there is a vision and the motivation and commitment to work towards it. Everybody who visits International leaves injected with the enthusiasm shared in equal measures by everyone involved. Teachers at IHS spend incredible amounts of time working together, a process they decided together was best. They have also scheduled token recognition time to collaborate; every Wednesday morning, while students are involved in extracurricular activities, teachers meet to discuss the different issues that concern the running of the community. They also meet voluntarily before and after school. Such meeting time is a great advantage, but some teachers who want an 8 to 4 job would not be excited by the prospect of spending hours beyond the "regular" working day to collaborate.