At this High School, Immigrant Students Are Out to Smash Your Expectations

Ten miles outside the nation’s capital, a young high school’s diverse community of newcomer students is surprising everyone, on the soccer field and in classrooms.  

Video

At this High School, Immigrant Students Are Out to Smash Your Expectations

Ten miles outside the nation’s capital, a young high school’s diverse community of newcomer students is surprising everyone, on the soccer field and in classrooms.  

November 16, 2018
A photograph of Faviola Leyva

Faviola Leyva

Video Producer

In Bladensburg, Maryland, International High School at Langley Park this year will graduate its first class of newcomers to the United States, many of whom are learning English.

Across the U.S., only about two-thirds of English language learners leave high school with degrees. But 95 percent of seniors at this school, led by founding principal Carlos Beato and assistant principal Daniel Sass (Baltimore ‘09), are on track to graduate, with many beginning now to receive scholarship offers.

Beato, himself an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, is also shooting for a May graduation from a doctoral program at the University of Maryland. His students have gone above and beyond to prepare for college, he says. He wants to set their aspirations even higher by handing them their diplomas while wearing his doctoral robes.  

Watch the short documentary to learn how seniors Yaya Diabagate, Yonathan Weldeberuk, Erick Lopez Pereira, and their classrooms are preparing for what comes next.

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