Flushing International High School

Patterned on the successful International High School at LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City, Flushing International High School prepares new immigrants for graduation, college, and work.

Nearly 40 percent of the students are unaccompanied minors who have arrived from Central America without their parents; many have had their education interrupted in their home country, according to the school’s yearly plan. Nonetheless, more than 60 percent graduate within 4 years, double the citywide average for students learning English.

Students come from 40 countries and speak languages 20 countries; they may live with distant relatives or on shelters, according to The New York Times.

“Teachers learn how to spot the signs of post-traumatic stress disorder — the girls who were raped, the boys who were pressed into gangs,” Lara Evangelista, the principal of Flushing International High School, in Queens, told a columnist for the New York Times. 

Flushing International, which shares a building with IS 189, provides a warm, welcoming environment for students, about half of whom are Latino and half of whom are Asian. Because students arrive at the school with different educational backgrounds and varying degrees of English fluency, classes mix age groups and 9th and 10th graders sit in the same classes. Kids work together, sitting not at desks in rows, but in groups at tables where they often collaborate on projects and translate for one another.

In the second semester of their senior year, students have full-time internships at businesses and community organizations to acquaint them with the world of work and to help them develop their English skills in a non-school setting. Internships have included work at an architectural firm and at a preschool.

Kids of all abilities share a classroom. This can be a handicap for very advanced students. However, students may take College Now classes at Queens College. There are few after school activities, partly because many students have such outside responsibilities as working or caring for younger siblings.

ADMISSIONS: The school is open to city residents who have been in the U.S. for less than four years, whose native language is not English, and who score in the intermediate, beginner, or below-level rank on a standardized language test, the NYSESLAT. (Clara Hemphill, web reports, July 2018)