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!

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. 

Research confirms that highly skilled teaching is the most important factor for student success in school. Yet, nearly 50% of teachers leave the profession within the first 5 years. Nationally, annual teacher turnover is 14%, and, in urban school districts, the turnover is even higher, at 20%. Such high turnover can be destabilizing to schools and heartbreaking to students.

As part of their National Board Certification, Gateway Middle School Humanities Teachers, Elizabeth Colen and Lucy Hilarides, created a tool to help students read, understand, and analyze complex texts deeper.

Gateway teachers are exceptional and are constantly exploring new ways to support our students and create safe spaces for learning and growing, even over the summer. In addition to participating in professional development trainings and workshops during the summer months, our teachers read books that helped deepen their teaching practice.

Last summer, Gateway High School biology teacher Mary Plant Thomas spent her summer days surrounded by flora in her role as a Plant Detective at the SF Botanical Gardens, a 55 acre living museum. She and her fellow sleuths were tasked with identifying and cataloging plants in the Garden’s vast collection. At the same time, Humanities teacher David Booth and other educators explored the galleries of the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, studying artwork dealing with issues of identity.

Each year, as the school year is about to start, I am again filled with excitement.  So many new variables make my profession as a teacher a constantly renewing one --new students, sometimes new curriculum, and always new ideas for how to make the curriculum more accessible and engaging to my students. 

Welcome to Gateway Impact’s Conversation Spot. Though some might refer to this as a “blog,” we disagree. Yes, we will publish periodic online writings that share thinking and educational practices that are near and dear to us at Gateway. However, blogs tend to be one-sided; our goal is to start conversations.