It Takes A Village Academy is a small high school focused on the needs of new immigrants still learning to speak English and low-performing students in East Flatbush. The school opened in September 2007 with a 9th grade and is growing by a grade per year. Eventually, it will serve 6-12th grade students, but the middle school will not be added until the high school is well established.

The administration has developed a creative curriculum plan to help the students succeed in high school and move on to college, despite the fact that more than half of the students are officially classified as English Language Learners and many had very little schooling before immigrating to the United States. The school also welcomes low-performing students and those who had low attendance rates in middle school.

We were very impressed with the school’s philosophy, curriculum, and the faculty’s energy and dedication, however, the teaching quality we witnessed was mixed. As a new school working with an extremely needy group of students in a building with a poor reputation, ITAVA faces a wealth of challenges.

Building and location: The school is located in the Samuel J. Tilden High School building, which it shares with two other new schools, Cultural Academy for the Arts and Sciences and the Kurt Hahn Expeditionary Learning School. The old building has wide, dark hallways that echo and magnify sounds. Tilden High School, which will be phased out by June 2010 due to poor performance, suffered from a violent reputation and high drop-out rates. The new schools are working hard to change the building’s culture. The physical structure is still uninviting and there is a considerable security presence in the entryway. On the day we visited, a studentnot from ITAVAwas being led out of the building in handcuffs as we entered.

School environment and culture: The small size of ITAVA means every teacher knows every student, and the interactions in the hallways are friendly and informal. On our visit, the school had only two of the proposed seven grades, but the faculty said that they would work to maintain the intimate, caring environment as the school grows. The building security guards, however, come into the hallways during class changes and scream for students to get to class.

The teachers respect the founding principal, Marina Vinitskaya, and say that she is very diligent, organized, consistent, and supportive. Teachers feel that they have a real stake in the school and that the administration values their opinions and input. Teachers and the principal admit that there are some classroom management issues, but in general, the students and teachers have good relationships, they told us.

Teaching and curriculum: The principal is passionate about curriculum planning. She has figured out a way to help students earn more credits each year than at a typical high school by extending the school day from 8:30 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. and by adding several one-credit classes, such as a literacy course called, "The History of Math." Every lesson plan at ITAVA is required to have a language objective as well as a content objective, the principal said. I In math class, there was a color-coded word wall, which is rare to see in high schools but was organized in a way that would be very helpful to the language-learning population at ITAVA.

The principal said the school has a technology, science, and math focus, and she requires that all of her math teachers also be computer scientists. The hope is that computer science will become the core of the school. Two of the classes that we were least impressed with, however, were technology and science. In a science class, groups of students were writing out facts on big pieces of chart paper, but in every group, one or two students were doing the work while the others were goofing off. Even the students working were only copying out of their textbook, and they didn’t seem to understand it. In an introduction to computer science class, few students were working and most were ignoring the teacher. The lesson was called,“Know your Keyboard,” and students seemed both bored by the content and confused about the functions of basic parts of the computer, like the spacebar.

We were very impressed with an English teacher who was working with a remedial class. She grouped the students according to their reading and English language abilities and assigned them all different readings appropriate for their skill level. She moved as quickly as she could from group to group helping the students work on a compare and contrast activity. Two of the students, who had never been to school before arriving in the United States, didn’t know how to read at all. The teacher told us that one of her biggest challenges was long-term absences. She said that sometimes students disappear for weeks and then return even more behind than when they left.

Family participation: Students' families are supportive but generally not active in the school community, the principal and teachers said. They said that they have made an effort to include parents but have gotten very little response.

After school: The school participates in College Now, a program that enables students to attend college prep classes and workshop at local colleges, beginning in the 9^th grade. Students are encouraged to participate in campus-wide Tilden athletics and the Robotics Program at Brooklyn College.

Special education: Special Education students receive services both within and outside of their classrooms.

English Language Learners: More than half of the students at ITAVA are classified as English Language Learners. Many of them speak Haitian or French at home; others speak Spanish, Bengali, Chinese, and Arabic.

Admissions: Priority to students who attend an information session. (Lindsey Whitton Christ, October 2008)