Schools That Work

A secure, successful environment

by Dorothy Callaci

Jan 22, 2009 2:05 PM

Staff teams up to make International HS at Lafayette ‘spectacular, from the bottom up’

Leeway, autonomy, initiative, participatory are not words plucked from a 9th-grade vocabulary test but the words that bubble up in conversation when faculty members at International HS at Lafayette in Bensonhurst talk about their work and their school.

An outsider coming into the school might also add warm and friendly to the word list. As social studies teacher Sean Burke noted, “This school is what more schools are trying to be.”

And, thinking back to his experiences at other schools over his 10-year career, he observed, “There are not as many angry people here.”

The 319 students attending the Brooklyn school are all new immigrants. Like students at all nine international schools in the city system, they came to the United States no more than four years ago with English as their second language — or maybe their fourth or fifth. This year will mark the school’s first graduation for the 77 seniors, class of 2009.

International shares the campus with the Expeditionary Learning School for Community Leaders, the HS of Sports Management, and Life Academy HS for Film and Music, as well as Lafayette HS, which is being phased out.

The challenge for the staff of 21 at International — most with dual ESL and subject area licenses — is to help these students from more than a dozen countries and languages become proficient in English and in the academic skills they need to earn a diploma and qualify for college. To that end, teachers work in teams and students learn in heterogeneous groups working at tables rather than individual desks with all instruction in English.

Art teacher Erika Tuttle can attest to their success. It’s not just that the graduation rate is expected to be well above 90 percent or that the students do “surprisingly well” in passing their English Regents, but, she explained, “They’ve found such a secure environment here they don’t want to graduate.

“I don’t even have to start class,” she said. “They just come in and get busy.”

As if on cue, students arriving for her next class immediately got mirrors and settled in to their work on self-portraits, this time concentrating on noses. If there were any ripples of distraction it was the reminder that the student art exhibit was scheduled for that afternoon in the library following the concert in the auditorium.

Visitors, even visitors snapping pictures, don’t seem to distract the young Rembrandts. That, explained Tuttle, is because they’re used to it. Educators — some from European countries dealing with waves of new immigration — drop by to explore this model for ELL learning in an encouraging atmosphere. Even the Gates Foundation has paid a visit and funds the international school network.

The environment is not just secure and nurturing for students but for staff as well. For Christina Zawerucha, an ESL/English teacher, Lafayette is where she discovered, “This is my career.”

At lunch, sharing a long table in the faculty lounge with colleagues as others worked at a line of computers, she eagerly put aside her sandwich to talk about “how very happy I am here.” A teaching fellow and transfer from a Bronx international high school, she rated Lafayette “spectacular, well organized and participatory, all from the bottom up.”

No faint praise, but now there were others chiming in. Social Studies teacher Michele Hamilton turned from the computer to talk enthusiastically about her opportunity to team teach with the chemistry teacher about the U.S. government’s response to climate change, environmental issues, and the Kyoto Protocol, as well as her team plans with a math teacher on an economics project next semester.

She described the merging of 9th and 10th grades and two teams of teachers — composed of drama/music, social studies, English, mathematics and science teachers — each working with groups of 75 to 80 students. Within that kind of interdisciplinary organization, she said, teachers “have leeway to play with schedules and the autonomy to take the initiative” in team planning.

“These kids have been through so much,” Hamilton said. “This way we keep them together and well supported.”

Outside the lounge, the halls and classrooms are very, very quiet as the school is immersed in the daily, sustained, silent reading period.

Principal Michael Soet, who encourages the staff’s initiatives and has led the school since its founding in 2005, credits small class size and individual attention for the school’s success.

Lona Jack-Vilmar, a teacher consultant with the New York City Writing Project at Lehman College, works to support teachers in writing projects across subject areas. She enjoys the range of differences among students and is impressed by the “positive atmosphere and the way teachers work alongside each other.

“This is a busy place with wonderful opportunities for the students,” she said.

Chapter Leader Joel Troge pointed out that teachers in each team “become incredibly close and form unique attachments,” probably the result of the Wednesday morning, hour-long, teacher-run team meetings held to discuss curriculum, student progress and meeting goals.

“The administration expects a lot from us,” he noted, “but it also provides all the necessary support for our work.”

Turnover? Three teachers have left — not as transfers, but to go to medical school.