Our Mission and Vision
At the Queens High School for Language Studies, students graduate with a strong academic foundation built with the support of quality educators who foster critical thinking, intellectual curiosity, and determination. Students are prepared for success in college and career through a rigorous, comprehensive curriculum that includes the intensive study of English and Mandarin. By meeting the linguistic, academic, and emotional needs of all our students, we challenge and encourage our graduates to achieve their best potential, not just in one language but in two.
Graduating college-ready students who are proficient in both academic English and Mandarin Chinese is our focus. We serve New York City’s adolescent Chinese immigrant learners, providing intensive English as a new language (ENL) instruction and bilingual support in the content areas for students learning academic English. We will also provide intensive Mandarin Chinese study for interested English-proficient students, welcoming students from all ethnic and cultural backgrounds. By learning a second language, students build empathy, patience, and understanding for one another’s diversity.
Quality literacy instruction and comprehensive course offerings are the key to our students’ academic success. In all content areas, teachers will engage their students in rich conversations around carefully selected texts that build literacy, develop analytical skills, and challenge their critical thinking. Students will learn to write convincingly and clearly in a variety of presentations. By graduation students will be confident, independent readers and writers, prepared and ready for college-level work in any discipline.
Our warm, close-knit community emphasizes collaboration and responsibility. Members of our community support one another to achieve their best potential; we also hold each other accountable. Success and growth are celebrated. Teachers, parents, counselors, community partners, and administrators come together to ensure our students’ needs are met through planning and communication. A culture of high expectations is sustained through caring, committed relationships.
QHSLS P-R-I-D-E: Our Core Values
Partnership: Working together is essential to achieving our best potential as an individual, as groups, and as a school.
Responsibility: Honest communication and integrity are the foundations for holding one another and ourselves responsible.
Inquiry: If we’re not asking questions, we’re not thinking. A desire to understand the “what, why, and how” drives our teaching and our love of learning.
Determination: Having persistence and self-discipline allows us to follow through on difficult tasks and to take risks.
Empathy: Thinking about ourselves begins with empathizing with others. We consider how our own actions have reactions.