EDUCATION : New York School Helps a World of Students Translate Success : International High accepts immigrant teen-agers with poor English skills. The halls ring with more than 40 languages.

Sweat shirts and baseball caps. Students wearing T-shirts, mouths filled with braces. Horseplay in the halls between classes. At first glance, it could be almost any public high school.

But a closer look reveals that this particular mix of students is a multiculturalist’s dream: a cornucopia of European, Asian and African faces, all filling the halls with a chorus of Caribbean, Eastern European and Chinese voices.

It’s New York’s International High, a four-year New York City public school. Criteria for admission: birth outside of the United States and a score of 20% or lower on an English proficiency exam. As a result, the school’s 450 students represent 60 countries with more than 40 separate languages.

In a city that over the last several decades has experienced a vast influx of immigrants, statistics show the school is a necessity. Almost 15% of New York’s 1 million students have limited proficiency in English--a trend that is accelerating, educators say. Half of all entering kindergarten pupils now come from homes where English is not the primary language.

Into the Mainstream

By clustering immigrants in selected schools, teachers hope to accelerate their transition into American life.

“The fact we are all immigrants makes it easier. We are all more comfortable,” says Molly Yu, 15, a native of China now living in Woodside, Queens.

The school, located on the campus of La Guardia Community College, was established in 1985 after educators took note of the increasing number of immigrant students attending the two-year college.

The high school and college are linked by more than location. International’s students are encouraged to take college-level classes. They can use the college gym. And, most important, graduates of International High School are guaranteed admission to La Guardia.

“There’s no doubt some of these students would fall through the cracks at a regular comprehensive high school,” says Charles Glassman, a teacher and administrator at the school. “They aren’t looked at as a benefit or resource.”

In fact, more than 90% of International High School’s students continue on to college, a rate that rivals many better-heeled suburban school districts.

International’s students bring to the classroom a wide variety of life experience. While some had consistent education before coming to the United States, others attended school in a piecemeal fashion. A few were not even literate in their native language. Students of all linguistic and educational backgrounds are mixed together in classes.

“Immigrant students are a vulnerable population in our society,” says Jacqueline Ancess, a senior research associate at Columbia University’s Teacher’s College. “One of the most important things International High School does is provide immigrant students with access to a rigorous academic education. They are not handicapped because they are not American citizens or native English speakers.”

But not all educators are supporters of four-year high schools for immigrant students.

Willis Hawley, dean of the University of Maryland’s College of Education and a scholar of desegregation, questions the appropriateness of separating immigrant students from others.

“A concern you could have is if separation of children from the mainstream population might retard their ability to learn the culture,” Hawley says. “Ask yourself the question: If you’re growing up in France, would it be the best thing to go to school with other American kids? It would be more comfortable, but would it be in your best interests in the long run?”

But Principal Eric Nadelstern says his students need a special setting like the one International High provides.

“My concern is that the trauma all adolescents experience (is compounded). They’ve left their families, they face a culture they can’t quite comprehend and a language they don’t know at a time when undergoing adolescent travails,” Nadelstern says. “Considering the dislocation they’ve faced, they need to feel connected.”

Fleurina Kuka, now 16, was left with her older brother and grandmother when her parents left Yugoslavia and came to the United States eight years ago.

Lives of Challenge

Now in the United States two years, Kuka still misses her grandmother fiercely.

“She’s like my mother. I feel like my (real) parents are just taking care of me. I can’t love them like other people love their parents. It’s not that easy.”

And then there’s Diantha Hall, 16, one of the few students in the school actually born in New York.

Hall’s Costa Rican-born mother and Panamanian-born father split up when she was 5. Her mother remained in New York, but sent Diantha to live with an aunt in Costa Rica for several years and she lost most of her English language skills.

“I’m really confused. I want to go back home, but I want to stay here,” Hall says. “If I could do anything, I would turn back the clock and just do things one way. No changes. When I went over to Costa Rica with no Spanish, I didn’t know anybody, not my grandmother, not my aunt. When I come back here, I didn’t know nobody. I felt lonely even though I’m a person who finds friends everywhere.”

Spanish is the most common language of the school’s students, followed by Chinese and Polish. Others include Russian and Korean.

Students do not take bilingual classes. English is taught through the immersion method in the school’s small classes, but students are encouraged to continue studying and speaking their native tongue. Often, older students act as impromptu translators for more recent arrivals. Students share their fears and problems with one another. They talk about the violence that’s pervasive in many of their neighborhoods, missing relatives and friends left behind in their native countries--and, for some, their hatred of New York’s winter climate.

“I came in the winter and it was terrible,” says Kruskaya Cabral, 15, of her arrival in Brooklyn from the Dominican Republic two years ago. “Yes, I wanted to leave right away. It was different, I didn’t feel anyone cared. I miss a lot of things--friends, my country and I didn’t know English.”

A Place to Fit In

Students discover International in a variety of ways. Many are recommended by guidance counselors at other city schools. Others hear about it from neighbors and friends already attending the school. Still others come after a year at the city’s Liberty High School, a one-year transitional program for recent immigrant students.

And some graduates find it hard to leave the school. Mohammad Nader, 24, a 1988 graduate, is studying political science at Queens College. He also runs International’s computer lab.

Nader arrived at International in 1985 as part of its first class. He and his older brother were smuggled out of Afghanistan in the back of a truck. Arriving in Queens to stay with an older brother, Nader spoke no English and found himself in the ninth grade at a junior high school while working at an Arkansas Fried Chicken fast-food restaurant on weekends. A guidance counselor steered him to International.

“It was hard then, and it’s still hard. At (15), I was on my own, no mom, no dad, going to school, paying bills, no one to check my homework,” Nader recalls. “I personally don’t think I would have gone further than high school if I’d gone to another school. I’d probably be one of the dropouts.” International High’s success has spawned similar institutions. A second International High School is now in its first year of operation in Manhattan’s Chinatown, and still another is slated to open its doors in Brooklyn in time for the 1994-95 academic year.