Students Who Inspire Us
Josh Crafton, 11th Grader
Queens High School of Teaching, Queens, New York
“I was average in junior high, and I was looking for a high school that could really help me become better than average,” said Josh Crafton, an 11th grader at Queens High School of Teaching. “When I got accepted here, I thought it would be a new experience, and so did my mom.”
Fun. Different. Not your typical high school. That’s how Josh describes his experience thus far at Queens High School of Teaching (QHST).
“When I thought of high school in junior high, I thought it would be an excruciating experience,” he said. “[However], going to school here, I feel like I’m actually supported. It’s a small environment and I feel like everyone gets individual learning. I feel like the teachers care more and the students care more here. We work in groups. We work with teachers. We feel kind of pampered.”
Importantly, QHST is a public school – free to all who enroll, and yet because of the intentional environment of care, individual attention and high expectations that are part of every ISA school, Josh feels special.
“I feel like this was the best place for me to learn. In a large high school, I would have felt lost in the shuffle in a sense,” he said. “But here, I actually get the attention that I need, and it feels like more than a learning experience, I also get a social experience and the two go hand in hand.”
Josh especially appreciates the diversity of this school – how people from all over the borough of Queens of different races and socioeconomic backgrounds come together to learn.
“I’ve really learned a lot about people,” he said. “Through that I feel like I’ve learned more about myself, and I’ve matured. And we have things here like ‘school-wide values,’ and I’ve never heard of that in typical high schools. At first, I thought ‘that’s dumb,’ but as I’ve gone through high school, I’ve started thinking about my own values as a result, and why I do things.”
As Josh has progressed through high school, his love of acting has grown. He’s helped with one musical and acted in another.
“I’ve always been the center of attention, and so acting has always been in the back of my mind. When I got here, I had Ms. Delano, a great theatre teacher here, and she’s really trained in what she does,” said Josh. “She’s really helped me enhance my acting and musical abilities. She’s extremely talented and she’s supportive as she teaches you. I always thought acting was risky, but I’ve done it and I’m really proud of that, and I’ve done stuff like acted in a Colgate commercial, so I’ve done it.”
Josh has emerged as a visible and uncommon high school student, and he attributes that to at QHST. He hopes to attend Five Towns College or Purchase University upon his graduation from QHST.
Angela Gonzales, 11th Grader
Queens High School of Teaching, Queens, New York
“I just read the Alchemist by Pablo Coehlo,” said Angela Gonzales, an 11th grader at Queens High School of Teaching (QHST) in Bellerose, New York. “It’s more than a book about a boy and a girl and magic – it’s about finding yourself.”
Coehlo’s work is a part of the Queens High School of Teaching DEAR program – Drop Everything and Read. DEAR is designed to instill in students a love of reading and to illustrate its importance. Every day after lunch, students gather for 40 minutes and read a book of their choice or a work that is teacher-selected. The Alchemist was picked by Angela’s 11th Grade lead teacher, Nancy Ferrara.
It was with the Alchemist that Angela first began to give voice to her own, young journey. When she arrived at Queens High School of Teaching, reading and writing were her sore points. In junior high, she struggled with mechanics and, importantly, expressing herself on the page. She was very shy and within herself. She lacked confidence.
On her first day at QHST, she was confronted by her worst-case scenario: her first class was English, taught by Nancy Ferrara, and she was seated across from a boy she liked. She was so scared that Ms. Ferrara would make her read or write something. This worst-case immediately unfolded as Ms. Ferrara promptly assigned a poem.
“I was like, ‘A poem? I hate this class.’ I was so scared, but Ms. Ferrara – I don’t know – she was so excited about her job and the students, it made me want to like reading and writing even from that first day. It was the best year, because of our teachers – they treat us a like a family,” she said.
Ask Angela about what’s different at Queens High School of Teaching compared to her junior high and she immediately points out the attributes of equality, attention and size.
“Here, everybody’s the same,” she said. “At my other school, advanced kids and kids that were slower [academically] were separated and put in different classes, but here we’re in all the same classes together, no matter what level we are. It’s kind of cool. You don’t feel less confident than someone else. That’s why I came here – I didn’t want to go to a really big school because I’ve had real problems with my confidence. Coming here, teachers paid more attention to me and I learned more.”
Angela’s progression from a shy, scared freshman to a confident junior took some time, but she attributes her development to the teachers who have nurtured her academically, emotionally and socially.
“I’m a junior now, and I’ve had three years here. Teachers have really worked with me, both giving me compliments on my work and sitting with me and talking me through what I need to improve. They’ve really taken the time for me,” she said. “This year has been my favorite so far, because I’m seeing my work pay off.”
“So last week, after we read the Alchemist, I wrote an essay on it and she really liked my last paragraph, and it really hit me.” she said. “I felt so good that something I had been working at so hard throughout the years had finally paid off. And to know that my paragraph was getting re-read by Ms. Ferrara in other classes: that was really cool.”
Angela believes the Alchemist should be on everyone’s reading list.
“You must read this book,” she said. “A boy – a sheepherder – is confronted with a journey to find treasure, and when he starts out that treasure is money, but in the end, that treasure is really finding himself. And it took SO LONG for him to find it, but he did. What I wrote in my paragraph was that this really gave me something to think about in my own journey and that treasure isn’t something that you dig up from under the ground, it’s something you find in your heart.”
Upon graduation from QHST, Angela hopes to study interior design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City.
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