Student Empowerment Programs
Student-Led Service Learning Projects
Our service-learning projects set our school apart and prepare our students to be leaders in their communities and the world! Each student completes four service-learning projects each year. These projects integrate academics, critical thinking, creativity, and leadership skills as students work together to answer questions, solve real-world problems, and raise funds for local and global causes. The students work weekly on the unit for six weeks. Throughout the six weeks each grade works on a different “Guiding Question” that support inquiry-based learning and connect to our academic curriculum.
Student Journalism
QE engages students in Broadcasting & Journalism by providing students with a platform to gather information, interview sources, raise issues, report news, and share stories. Students use digital tools to record posts for Digital News Slides and social media. Beyond that, students provide written testimonials about their learning in monthly Curriculum Newsletters.
Student Leadership Program
QE produces socially conscious, critically minded, and globally aware student leaders. Our students make decisions to improve the school environment and policies. We empower students to be agents of change in their local and global communities. Student Leaders will host fundraisers, lead campaigns, and plan events to engage their peers, teachers, and community.
Student Learning Conferences
QE regularly solicits student feedback throughout the year as the school conducts Student Learning Conferences with groups of students to get a pulse on curriculum, instruction, assessment, and social-emotional learning. This allows the school to implement instructional approaches and techniques that are based on student choices, interests, passions, and ambitions.
Student-Led Conferences
QE invites students to all discussions related to their own learning. Individual students are included in parent-teacher conferences, IEP meetings, student support meetings, discipline hearings — any discussion in which they are the main topic. This allows students to describe their academic progress and collaborate with teachers and parents to address academic, behavioral, or social challenges.
Future Foodies
The Future Foodies is a 10-week afterschool program covering sustainability, gardening & plant science, composting & recycling, NYC history, and what we can learn from early New Yorkers that developed our city. Each session includes an activity, encouraging students to practically apply the knowledge they gain. All that is learned will come together for a culminating activity in which students plan a design for their own farm and share with the group what they learned and plan to grow.This program is delivered by educators from the Queens County Farm Museum. Farmed since 1697, it is one of the longest continually farmed sites in New York State. The program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council. We appreciate the support of NYC Council Member Joann Ariola in making this program possible.
