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.

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. 

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.

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.