newsletter PROFESSIONAL EDITION | Summer 2019
Dear Gateway Community, Welcome to the Summer 2019 issue of The Gateway Professional Newsletter! This past school year has been full of exciting changes and expansions at The Gateway School, and we look forward to sharing it with our 205 students and their families when we welcome them back in the fall. We hope our Gateway families and friends enjoy a relaxing and safe summer holiday. We look forward to seeing you back in September! In this edition of The Gateway Professional Newsletter, meet the School’s Middle School Psychologist, William Harrison, Ph.D., who tells us about his work with the students and what it means to have learning disabilities and/or ADHD in middle school. You will also hear from one of Gateway’s alums, Jordan Cohen, who was recently accepted to Georgetown University. Finally, our Gateway senior faculty speak with us about CPS: Collaborative and Proactive Solutions, a solution model for problematic behaviors created by Dr. Ross Greene. Want to be one of the first to know what Gateway students and staff are up to on a regular basis? Be sure to follow The Gateway School on Facebook and Instagram. See the back of this newsletter for the School’s social media handles.
GATEWAY STUDENT ACCEPTANCES Some of the schools to which Gateway students have been accepted in the last four years inlude:
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Bay Ridge Prep Berkeley Carroll Birch Wathen Lenox Brooklyn Friends Browning Churchill Dwight Eagle Hill Forman
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Harvey Marvelwood Mary McDowell Friends Oldfields Poly Prep SAR Solomon Schechter Talent Unlimited York Prep
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ALUMNI
spotlight “In D.C., I’ll be at the center of everything. I’ll get to choose what I want to study.” Jordan Cohen, Class of 2012
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Tell us a little bit about your educational journey and applying to colleges. I attended Gateway until 6th grade and Birch Wathen Lenox through high school. Applying to colleges was definitely stressful. I believe Gateway gave me the discipline I needed. It prepared me for standardized testing. Knowing I had to put the work in, I took practice tests every weekend. I studied my vocabulary and practiced math problems. I really focused on the areas where I knew I needed practice. When applying to colleges, Georgetown was one of the last applications I sent in, and I got accepted!
Q A
What do you think is the most important skill you learned at Gateway?
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What was your favorite subject at Gateway?
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Do you know what you’d like to study at Georgetown?
Q A
What are you most looking forward to about college?
Gateway taught me to organize myself and to really understand the material. I organize my tasks and focus on eliminating the easy stuff first and then tackle the harder material. I definitely learned how to attack problems head on.
Definitely math. I’m a quantitative person in general. I love the nature of numbers.
I will be attending the business school at Georgetown in the fall, but I haven’t declared a major yet. I’d like to explore my interests and then figure it out. But I’m leaning towards a career in business right now.
In D.C., I’ll be at the center of everything. I’ll get to choose what I want to study and focus on my interests. There are definitely more activities and internships available, especially at Capitol Hill. There are so many different clubs I would like to get involved in.
Collaborative & Proactive Solutions Co-Authored by Gateway Senior Administration
The Gateway School has always believed that helping children learn how to analyze and solve problems is an important way to prepare them for responsible and effective participation in a complex society. Social interactions are the basis for language development, and effective social interactions depend on language. Therefore, it is important that we explicitly teach students how to express their thoughts and feelings and establish successful peer relationships. Gateway’s Social Development and Language programs provide students with a system to categorize and communicate their feelings and explore various selfregulation strategies. Students gain valuable insight into their self-regulation abilities and develop critical problem-solving skills. In 2018, to complement the direct instruction students receive in language and social-emotional skills, we began to incorporate Dr. Ross Greene’s Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS) model. The CPS model is empirically-supported and evidencebased. It has been applied in countless environments, including family homes and schools and has been shown to be an effective way to reduce conflict, improve relationships, enhance communication, and facilitate the development of the critical problemsolving skills children need to function adaptively in the real world. Most importantly, it helps kids learn and display empathy, perspective-taking, and honesty.
In line with Gateway’s diagnostic, skills-based instructional model, CPS operates under the core belief that children do well if they can. Thus, the emphasis of the model is not on kids’ challenging behavior; rather, it is on identifying the skills that students are lacking and the expectations they are having difficulty meeting. With this understanding in mind, teachers, parents, and caregivers identify a child’s lagging skills and unsolved problems and work collaboratively to find solutions. Engaging in a problem-solving conversation involves listening to the student’s thoughts and concerns, listing your own concerns (as the adult), and working collaboratively to come up with a solution that is both realistic and mutually satisfactory. These conversations set the foundation for a strong relationship, one based on mutual respect and collaboration. Members of Gateway’s senior faculty completed the intensive 24-week advanced level training course and became CPS certified. Nearly 20 members of Gateway faculty and staff received weekly training by the certified providers. Our CPS certified members continue to provide support, coaching, and internal professional development for staff as they deepen their understanding of how to best serve our students. Be sure to join The Gateway School in the fall when Dr. Ross Greene will be observing, providing professional development to faculty and staff, and conducting an evening lecture for Gateway families on how to implement CPS at home. This will be a wonderful opportunity to learn from the expert himself. If interested in attending the evening lecture, reach out to Gateway’s front desk at frontdesk@ gatewayschool.org. To learn more about CPS visit their website at www. livesinthebalance.org. We recommend the Walking Tour for Parents and a helpful description of the model, which can be found under the CPS resources tab on their homepage, titled “About CPS.” Scroll to the bottom for a downloadable one-page description.
Meet the Professionals, with William Harrison, Ph.D. William Harrison, Ph.D. is the Middle School Psychologist at The Gateway School. Dr. Harrison previously worked at Abbott House, a nonprofit social service agency, for over seven years, and has experience in individual, group, and family therapy. He has been at The Gateway School for four years.
work do you do Q What with the students? primary responsibility is to run social development A My groups, which are small groups of about 5-7 Middle
School students. We discuss a range of topics. Often it will come from a flexible curriculum that is mapped out each year and focuses on skills we believe are important for students to learn; but oftentimes we will also discuss current issues that are relevant to our students. This can be struggles with social media use, body image issues, or current topics in the news. My focus is mostly social/emotional support. In middle school, conflict is a norm and something that is going to happen. It usually happens in a spectacular fashion because of where children tend to be developmentally in middle school. They need lots of support to get through some of this kind of stuff, and I help to teach the skills they need to do it.
are the challenges of school for a student with Q What learning disabliities? traditional structure of school is that there is a A The specific way to come up with an answer, and typically there is only one expected answer. People with ADHD struggle with it a lot. Their brain is the opposite way: they start with one thing and branch off to multiple ways. That is one thing that I do appreciate about Gateway—they use multimodal and multisensory techniques. Another challenge for students is that it’s a long day to be engaged in learning. The expectation is that you go to all these classes and that you’re ready to learn. Children have different stamina. A student might find themselves in my office if they don’t know or understand that is what they are struggling with. Otherwise, the teacher knows and has built in a break for them. What are your thoughts on your experience at Gateway?
Q has a great energy about it, and the teachers A Gateway here really like kids. It helps you get through the rough
days. Teachers often come and ask my advice. I do a lot of consulting with the teachers and helping to brainstorm strategies. They are really open to learning about the students and applying recommendations from me. They want to find the best ways to help children learn. That is incredibly refreshing.
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IN OUR FAMILIES’ OWN WORDS... “It is ironic that a school to which one needs to send a child becomes the school that one begins to recognize as a gold standard for all schools. Here one sees firsthand the power of education provided with an understanding of the intricacies of the learning process. Here, one has the joy and privilege of watching children learn how to learn, finding comfort and happiness within their learning environment. All this inevitably leads to the discovery and practice of real talents they confidently carry with them into the future. That is education. That is Gateway.” “Gateway has given my son a safe and supportive community in which to grow. He is surrounded by talented and kind educators who give him the time and confidence to find his own path to learning.”
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