It has been an eventful week for us at Gateway Public Schools, as it has certainly been for most of you as well. Monday marked our first day back from Spring Break and the first day of our formal Distance Learning program, and with it the joy of “seeing” students again coupled with the anxiety of piloting a whole new way of teaching and learning for our community. Then Tuesday brought news that San Francisco would be joining the rest of the state and Bay Area in keeping campuses closed for the rest of the school year, meaning we are officially all-in on distance learning for the long haul. While this wasn’t entirely a surprise – in fact, it was the contingency staff were already planning for – the thought of our halls remaining silent for the rest of the year is, well, a bummer.

Wherever you thought the 2019-20 school year would take you, it probably wasn’t huddled over a webcam in your living room teaching students scattered across your city. But here we are, doing what educators always do even as news about the COVID-19 pandemic and shelter in place (for California) plans change daily: doing more with less, learning on the job, and honing our craft a little more every day. You are more than qualified to meet the challenge of the current moment, and our hope is our HomeRoom newsletter will be a forum to help us get there together.

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!