Outstanding School
Institute for Health Professions at Cambria Heights
Principal: Gareth Robinson
Grades 9-12
207-01 116th Avenue, Cambria Heights, Queens
ihpch.org
Describe your school’s core educational philosophy.
We believe that leaders are made, not born. Leadership requires us to empower the people around us to achieve their best. Leaders do this by leading by example even when no one is looking, making our personal learning public, and developing strong personal relationships with others.
We believe that learning must take place in context and is driven by more than a person’s IQ. We will listen, speak, write, and read like literary scholars, historians, mathematicians, scientists, and artists so that we can make meaning of the world. We recognize that our academic ability is determined by our resilience, grit, conscientiousness, creativity, and focus, as much as by our IQ.
Tell us about a few of the school’s achievements or distinguishing programs.
We are a small Progressive Career and Technical High School located in southeast Queens. The school is a new member of the New York Performance Standards Consortium, which means we have been granted the right to have our students use Performance-Based Assessment Tasks instead of Regents exams to meet state graduation requirements. As such, we emphasize the use of real world projects, higher order thinking skills, and substantive discussion as part of our academic program. We are partnered with the Institute for Student Achievement, National Academy Foundation, Northwell Health, and Hofstra University.
We offer a pre-nursing program that is taught by two RNs and an EMT-Basic Original program that is taught by a paramedic. Students attend trainings at Northwell Health’s Center for Learning and Innovation and events at Hofstra like the Minority Health Fair where they serve as judges for student PSAs created by Hofstra students.
What’s new?
We are offering students a chance to earn college credit for our statistics, neuroscience, and college algebra courses through a partnership with SUNY Cobleskill.
What do you love about your school?
I love the fact that our waiver from the Regents allows us to customize our curricula in ways that interest our kids and challenge them to think. I also love that our school is a family.
