After 10 weeks of strategies, resources and PD opportunities designed to help your classroom become a supportive and purposeful community as early in the year as possible, we hope you feel that you and your students are starting to hit your stride! In this final issue of Early Impact we’ll be jumping ahead in time several months to an event that takes place at Gateway in the early spring. 

Having explored student collaboration in the most recent issue of Early Impact, today we’re focusing on how to strengthen your own collaboration with colleagues.

At Gateway, school is back in session, with all the excitement and frenetic activity those first few weeks entail! Whether this is your first year with students or your 30th, we hope you’re feeling energized by the boundless opportunity of a new year!

August is officially here and for most of us, that means the first day of school or our program year is right around the corner! But don’t panic -- Early Impact is back with more resources and tools to set you and your students up for success. 

Welcome back to Early Impact, our bi-weekly roundup of strategies and tools vetted by the student agency experts at Gateway Impact, designed to help you super-charge student learning and engagement in the new school year. Whether you’re a teacher, administrator, or work with students in a different capacity, you’ll find resources, research, and learning opportunities centered on best practices for serving diverse learners.

Whether your adventures lead you to an exotic beach or just to your favorite spot on your patio, we hope you’re making the most of the season. At the same time, for those of us who support students both in and out of the classroom, it’s all but impossible not to think ahead to the new school year! To aid in your planning and help you start the year off strong, we’re introducing Early Impact, a bi-weekly roundup of strategies and tools vetted by our student agency experts at Gateway Impact. 

In my last blog I explained what student agency is and the important research base behind it. But what are some best practices to teach and develop student agency? How do I, as a classroom teacher, start integrating student agency strategies into my classroom? Here are a few daily and weekly strategies which, when used regularly, help students to become more self-aware and grow in their skills as learners.

About four years ago, Gateway Public Schools began thinking about what to do next as an organization. We had recently completed the process of launching our new middle school and had built up our organizational capacity and assets along the way. And while we recognized the vital importance to continue to innovatively grow our organization’s impact, we didn’t know what that growth should look like.