Park East High School

The mission of The English Department at Park East High School is to create independent and critical thinkers. We seek to prepare students for the challenges of college level work and encourage them to explore the world and their place in it. We offer a four-year sequence of ELA courses aligned with Common Core standards.

Students will read diverse and rigorous texts to develop their understanding of themselves and the world around them.  Through our intensive writing program, students will develop the ability to build and sustain logical arguments, understand and synthesize multiple sources, and to write creatively. 

As a department, we believe students benefit from exposure to both classical and contemporary texts. We work closely with the history department to make sure students are reading texts that compliment the ideas they are exploring in their history courses, whether it be chronologically or thematically. Freshmen and sophomores study global texts and issues and juniors go on to study American literature. During their senior year, while they are taking government and economics classes, ELA students use classical lenses to explore the challenges of the contemporary world.  Along with our four-year cycle we offer AP Language and Composition to juniors and AP Literature and Composition to seniors. We also offer rotating English electives like A Survey of Shakespeare, Social Justice, Literary Drama, Yearbook, Poetry, Research and Technology, and Literature and the Seven Deadly Sins.

The Mathematics Department at Park East High School is cohesive, collaborative group of teachers committed to advancing students’ college and careers aspirations through a robust curriculum embedded with supports and challenges designed to meet individual student needs. Course offerings include the full sequence of New York State Regents courses (Common Core Algebra I, Geometry, & Algebra II) to allow students the opportunity to achieve an Advanced Regents Diploma. Our college-preparatory focus and commitment to real world application are further developed through Statistics and AP Calculus. Our curriculum represents a rigorous balance integrating procedural skill and fluency with conceptual understanding and application emphasized through project-based learning. Ninth graders begin with an Algebra I or Geometry following a one year pacing, throughout which student progress is carefully monitored. Students ready for further challenge are recommended for Mathletes (nationwide math competitions), MS2 (a renowned summer program on a the campus of a prestigious private school), and College Now (a college-credit bearing CUNY partnership).  Students identified as to likely benefit from small group instruction have Academic Intervention Services (AIS) are built into their programs. The result is a differentiated curriculum with an exceptionally high regents pass rate and a community of learners who grow through challenge and personal attention.

The Park East Physical Education Department teaches students the importance of choosing a healthy lifestyle.  A lifestyle that includes exercise and fitness, a proper diet, and appropriate body maintenance.  Each student will be required to take and successfully pass 7 semesters of Physical Education. Each semester students will experience and master different aspects of health and fitness.  At the end of their high school careers, students will understand the impact of living a healthy lifestyle and develop the ability to make healthy choices. The ultimate goal of the physical education department is to promote exercise and fitness among its students not only during their time at Park East, but more importantly throughout the rest of their lives.

The science department at Park East focuses on building students' skills in lab report writing, collaboration, and experimentation by offering unique inquiry experiences throughout the sequence of classes. Through their science career at Park East, students engage in meaningful labs to stretch their thinking about the world around them. Students in 9th grade generally take Regents-bound Living Environment, 10th grade students are enrolled in Regents-bound Earth Science, 11th grade students take Regents-bound Chemistry, and then have an array of choices for electives to take during their 12th grade year. Students can elect to take Physics where they can learn the laws of the natural world by building catapults, Anatomy where students can dissect animals and learn about the human body, Forensics where they can examine a crime scene and collect evidence of blood splatters, Exercise Physiology where students can learn about the best ways to work out and create healthy exercise routines, and AP Environmental Science where they can survey a plot of land for evidence of biodiversity. Students learn not only about the world around them through science classes at Park East, but they learn their place in the world and what the true nature of science is.

The Park East High School Social Studies department prepares students to be aware, thoughtful, questioning, and decent adults. This end is achieved through both skills-based instruction and the careful selection of historical content covered in significant depth rather than breadth. Instruction moves well beyond the demands of the Regents exams and focuses on the rigors of college and processes of historical thinking.

We embrace writing and research as processes that necessitate the use of numerous other skills. We deeply engage in the historical process, making meaning from primary sources. We build on these understandings by reading challenging texts by notable historians. We believe that because modernity is rooted in the past, the application of our historical understandings to the present is natural and necessary.

Park East High School Social Studies students graduate prepared to understand the myriad historical forces that explain their world and able to recognize and accept the differences in points of view that stem from that. 

Students at Park East can take Spanish to meet graduation requirements.  All students are required to complete one year of Spanish in ninth grade.  Students are introduced to the important skills that are necessary to comprehend the Spanish language. These skills include verbal, reading, writing and listening. Students are also exposed to the many diverse cultures of the Spanish speaking world.  For students interested in continuing their linguistic and cultural experience, we offer upper levels: 3-6.  That is, students will complete a 3-year sequence and take the New York City Department of Education Comprehensive Examination in Spanish.