From NYC’s International Schools, Lessons For Teaching Unaccompanied Minors

*I’m always interested in sharing stories about ideas that work. Here’s one about educating immigrant children that has seen success in NYC. VL

By Alexandra Starr, NPR

Flushing International High School is like a teenage version of the United Nations. Walk down the hallway and you can meet students from Colombia, China, Ecuador, Bangladesh and South Korea.

“Our students come from about 40 different countries, speak 20 different languages,” says Lara Evangelista, the school’s principal.

With schools around the country scrambling to educate the more than 57,000 unaccompanied child migrants who’ve crossed the border this year, I came to see what lessons International Schools like this one can offer.

“We’ve always served unaccompanied minors,” Evangelista says. “This is not something new to us. I would say we have systems and structures in place to serve the needs of those students.

New York’s international schools serve a challenging demogaphic: Enrollees must come from the bottom quartile in scores on English-language tests. They must have been in the U.S. for less than four years upon admittance; most have been in the country for far less time. And 90 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch.

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