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Dear Gateway Community,
The end of the school year feels almost entirely unfamiliar this spring. Typically, late May and June is a blur of events and celebrations: exhibitions of student work, awards nights, parties, graduations. The end of the year is crazy-busy, but it is also the most rewarding time of the year. In 2020, year-end rituals and celebrations take place via computer screens and virtual hugs are the best we can offer. The year is ending with as much uncertainty as pomp and circumstance.
Despite the challenges and changes that COVID-19 has brought, the Gateway community has reminded me that community is about a lot more than proximity. Yes, it’s true that our “classrooms” are now spread across nearly a thousand homes and apartments across San Francisco. But, over the months since shelter-in-place started, I have seen incredible demonstrations of community and connection among students and staff:
teachers’ weekly shout-outs to students in our all-school videos; touching digital celebrations of each senior as they prepare for their next adventure; the entire 6th grade meeting and interviewing (via Zoom) Ji-Li Jiang, the author of Red Scarf Girl, the book they were reading when school closed; my advisees comforting Ali via group text when he realized that he would be missing out on all the excitement of senior rituals he had been looking forward to for four years.
Schools – and specifically Gateway High School and Gateway Middle School – are home for me. Schools are places of ideas, change and hope. I am blown away by the grace and creativity with which teachers and staff adjusted on the fly to distance learning. I am also blown away by students' resilience and their ability to maintain perspective in the face of such monumental changes. One of our seniors, Masiyah Edwards said to me, “I’m not dwelling on it. Yes, I would have liked to have a normal graduation and that special moment when I realize I made it. But, even without graduation, I know I made it, and I know I couldn’t have done it without the support of my teachers and friends at Gateway. And nothing changes that.”
Warm regards,
Sharon Olken
Executive Director, Gateway Public Schools
Gateway’s Class of 2020 Boasts 100% Graduation Rate
The Class of 2020 may not have been able to be physically together for their commencement ceremony on June 6, but they were together in one very significant way: 100% of Gateway High’s Senior Class graduated this year, a remarkable achievement for a student cohort that has faced more than its fair share of challenges in the past several months. READ MORE >
“And Then We Just Had to Go Home:” Reflections from Aram Kim, Rising 7th Grader
“To be honest, Mondays are my favorite day of the week,” said Aram. “I don’t mean to sound like a nerd, but I just really, really like school.”
Talking with Aram, it’s hard to imagine who wouldn't like school – her enthusiasm has a tendency to spread. Whether she’s talking about learning to multiply and divide decimals (“very useful to know”), the cultures and myths of past civilizations (her favorite? Ancient Greeks), or dissecting a chicken leg (“weird but interesting!”), it’s clear that her natural curiosity has led her to squeeze every last drop of knowledge out of the sixth grade. READ MORE >
Quarantine as Lived by Young Gateway Poets
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic was a huge disruption to school life, but for many Gateway teachers it also presented an irresistible, once-in-a-lifetime learning opportunity with applications in virtually every academic subject. Teachers didn't just pivot to distance learning, most completely rewrote the curriculum they had planned on teaching through the end of the year, looking for ways to engage students with current-events as they developed. One such project asked eighth grade students to keep a journal of their experiences while sheltering in place, then construct a "found poem" by artfully re-arranging the entries. READ MORE >
Ninth Grade Science Students Go Global with Zoom Speaker Series
Photo: Guest speaker Dr. Ashton preparing for a dive in Antarctica
When it first became apparent that Gateway students and staff would be unable to return to campus for an extended period of time, 9th grade Environmental Science Teacher Alix Spivack’s first thought was similar to that of science teachers around the world: “Oh no, we’re losing our labs!” For a teacher tasked with investing students in the wonder and adventure of science, losing the ability to guide students through experiments is a bummer. What to do? READ MORE >
Enterprise for Youth Introduces GHS Students to the Working World
Jasmine hasn’t even started her senior year of high school yet, but her resume is already three pages long. As one of the first students to take advantage of Enterprise for Youth’s job-readiness programs when the organization first partnered with Gateway High School three years ago, she’s gained work experience in horticulture, interior design, retail and more, all before many young people have even had their first job interview.
“The more experience I get, the more interests I’m able to discover,” she said. “The hard part is going to be narrowing it down.” READ MORE >
Designing Professional Development for a Pandemic
Teachers can’t rest on their laurels; in addition to the never-ending work of planning, grading, teaching, and building relationships with kids, educators must constantly commit to their own learning, staying abreast of new research and best practices that will help them be more effective.
Recognizing the importance of professional development for both student success and teacher job satisfaction, Gateway has long prioritized these opportunities, weaving them into the annual, monthly, and daily academic schedules. In fact, Gateway teachers receive considerably more hours of professional development than the national average for public school teachers. But how do you support teachers when they’re asked to teach in a completely different way, on very short notice, while managing their own health and safety amid a pandemic? READ MORE >
Gateway Supports Hundreds of Educators with Distance Learning Publication
Gateway’s commitment to being a force for change in public education didn’t end when school campuses closed this year. As small charter schools, Gateway Middle and High had the opportunity to get a head start on developing distance learning plans, sometimes weeks before larger districts were able to finalize and announce decisions about what learning under shelter-in-place would look like. In the hopes that the planning work being done at our schools could spare educators elsewhere from having to reinvent the wheel, Gateway published the best resources developed-in house and from elsewhere in a weekly newsletter called “HomeRoom.”
The publication focused on resources to help teachers plan and implement distance learning, improve communication and relationships with students and families, and prioritize their own well-being during challenging times. Running from March to the end of the semester, the newsletter reached nearly 500 educators a week. Given HomeRoom’s success, the newsletter will return after a brief hiatus in mid-July, with an emphasis on helping teachers plan for the coming school year. In the meantime, HomeRoom remains free to all on the Gateway Impact website.
Resilient Schools, Resilient Learners
In March, Gateway Public Schools launched The Resilience Fund to provide the critical support that will help sustain what we are doing to respond to the crisis, and to ensure we are strong coming out of it. Gateway educators are still teaching. Gateway students are still learning. And we will have to continue as a community in the fall with a significant decrease in state funding and lessening grants for public schools.
Our goal is to raise $250,000 to ensure Gateway thrives, and our students are resilient, and we have only $75,733 left to raise by June 30.
Please consider supporting the Resilience Fund and Gateway's sustainability. Your gift today will be part of an unwavering commitment to 800 bright students and 100 dedicated teachers.
Save the Date: 2020 Matters of the Mind
This year's Matters of the Mind on Wednesday, October 14, 2020 will be an online gathering of the incredible community that makes our mission possible.
We are thrilled to welcome Paul Tough, author of bestsellers The Years That Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us and How Children Succeed. In talks drawn from his six years of research and travel, Tough challenges the status quo, revealing how higher education and social mobility really work, and what we can do to make it more equitable for all.
For more details click here.
In Case You Missed It: Gateway Seniors Reflect on Their Exceptional Year
In May, Executive Director Sharon Olken sat down with GHS Seniors Krystal and Masiyah for our virtual Resilience In Action event, sharing their perspective about how COVID-19 unexpectedly shaped their last months of high school and their post-secondary plans. Check out their thoughtful, sometimes funny, sometimes poignant conversation here.
