What's New? 5/16/01
1. Four Different Types of Composers (Copland)
2. Mary's Dialectical Notes
3. Maggie's Dialectical Notes
4. Prelude No. 1 in C major

What makes this cluster such a panic?

What projects will we be doing?

What's the Essential Question?

Students' concerns and questions

Photo from the Toledo Museum of Art

     Take a guided tour

Background Music:
Well-Tempered Clavier,
Prelude 9, by J. S. Bach
from Mutopia
1:18 [turn off]

Welcome to PANYC, pronounced /'pan-ik/, an interdisciplinary program of study for ninth and tenth graders offered at The International High School: A Charter School at LaGuardia Community College, which is in Long Island City, New York. Eric Nadelstern is our principal.

First, we don't want you to panic, or be filled with fear because of our name.  After all, one definition of the word panic (as an adjective) is: "of, relating to, or resembling the mental or emotional state believed induced by the god Pan," who wasn't such a bad god in Classical Greek mythology [Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary]. Pan helped farmers, herders, and fisherfolk who dedicated their first fruits to him, and he brought health to all who properly approached his shrines of healing. Most importantly, he was the guardian of the unfamiliar or wild areas of the world and life, and Pan gave wisdom to those who passed by him on their way into unknown territory. He was also an excellent musician. Maybe the kind of panic we can experience will be to have emotional, artistic, exciting adventures together that push us beyond what we already know as students and teachers.

Of course, PANYC stands for something else too; it's not that we can't spell correctly. Our cluster of classes is called PANYC because we will be using Projects and Adventures to study New York City. A few examples:

Keep in mind, these are only a few examples. To learn more about each subject area, click on one of the boxes at the top. We plan to be updating this web site on a regular basis, so stay tuned!

After planning for a few days in June and a couple of days before school started, we've come up with several possible essential questions, themes, or problems around which we will be planning our curriculum. However, it's important to us that we plan the curriculum with the students. Here are some possible essential questions that we have thought of so far (as of the first day of classes):

• Is New York City a good place to make a living?
• Does life thrive or just survive in New York City?
• Is it better to maintain your separate cultural identity or to assimilate?
• Is it better to compete or to cooperate?

We think that these will be exciting questions to explore in all of our classes, but we need to find out from you what your questions and concerns are about yourselves, others, and the world. From your questions, we will work with you to develop themes and perhaps one of the essential questions listed above will feel right. We might also revise one or write a completely new one. We want to find a problem that many students care about personally and that is important in the larger world.

To begin planning with you, we posed three questions to you. Click on each to see your lists of questions:

• What concerns or questions do you have about yourself?
• What concerns or questions do you have about others?
• What concerns or questions do you have about New York City and the world?

That's enough to begin! We'll keep up-dating this web site with information, handouts, and other things to provoke your thinking!