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The Gateway School is a pioneer in the field of special education. From its start in 1965 serving 3 students in a church building, the school now serves 64 students in its own beautifully renovated building on New York City’s Lower East Side. Though many of the students who attend the school today are very bright, they all have learning differences requiring a combination of individual attention with work in small groups. Gateway students range in age from 5 to 12 years, with most classes containing about 10 students led by 2 teachers.
I attended the Gateway School from 1972 to 1976 and remain forever grateful for the critical life skills I mastered there, abilities which have taken me on a successful journey through high school and college, followed by an MBA from Columbia Business School in 1994.
In the spring of 2000, as an active member of the alumni community and wanting to give back to the school which had helped me so much, I volunteered to mentor a 12-year-old boy preparing for graduation whose teachers believed he needed my help more than any other student. Jeremy, though very intelligent, was extremely hyperactive and prone to socially inappropriate behavior, including acting like a small child or throwing crying fits when he didn’t get what he wanted. Another notable aspect of his character was a profound love for and obsession with animals. Jeremy could recite voluminous facts relating to various creatures’ physical characteristics and habitats. However, he did not have a good outlet for turning his fascination into meaningful action.
As Jeremy responded very well to me, I agreed to continue working with him as he moved to his new school during the fall of 2000. I would meet him after school, help him with his homework assignments and spend quality time with him. Many of our meetings occurred at the offices of one of my consulting clients, a company which serves as the branding and marketing partner for America’s best-known zoos and aquariums. After finishing his homework, Jeremy would often spend a half hour or so with the company’s Director of Interactive Media, learning about the purpose behind this man’s work designing educational interactive games. Jeremy also discovered how people who love animals really can make a difference and help them.
In the following months, changes in Jeremy began to become apparent. His behavior became more mature and less childlike. He began to take public transportation by himself and no longer needed adults to pick him up. For his Bar Mitzvah he used a rainforest theme for the reception and donated a percentage of the money he received to an endangered species conservation program. Today Jeremy is a well adjusted and independent 16-year-old 11th grader who is a top student, has many friends and is beginning to make plans for college.
In light of the positive experience with Jeremy, I decided to approach Gateway to gauge the school’s interest in a pilot project to encourage student activism and self-directed problem solving in the nature space. With my contacts in the zoo and aquarium community, I was in a good position to help the school obtain support for such a program. I approached Gail Shell, the school’s brilliant Director of Computer Education, and found her very enthusiastic.
The project began during the fall of 2001 with one class of ten 9-11 year olds and focused on the Giant River Otter, an endangered species native to South America. For the first project class, Gail designed a PowerPoint presentation introducing the project, the otters, the otters’ habitat and the children’s responsibility. She discussed some of the challenges facing the otters and encouraged the students to volunteer ideas.
For the next few weeks, the children collected facts about the otters from the Internet and used a Microsoft software program called Inspiration to illustrate those facts. They also introduced their project to the rest of the school at Grandstand, Gateway’s school assembly.
By December the students had already designed their first two fundraisers. For the holiday party they designed Giant Otter postcards using common software products. Sales of the cards raised over $100. They also placed collection containers in each classroom where community members could deposit spare change, raising an additional $400.
In January the entire class wrote a letter to a private foundation, describing their efforts to help the otters and why their activities were important. In response, the school received a $1,500 grant which the students could use for any activities which furthered their conservation efforts. They used part of the money to rent a van and organize a class trip to the Philadelphia Zoo in the spring of 2002. At the zoo, the students received a behind-the-scenes private tour of the otter exhibit and had the opportunity to interview scientists working to save Giant Otters in the wild.
At year end the class organized a carnival for the entire school with events they organized and staffed themselves, such as drawing contests and basketball shoots. One boy, whose participation in the project helped him greatly following the loss of his mother in the terrorist attacks of September, 11, 2001, raised over $400 for the otters by designing and marketing a t-shirt promoting otter conservation.
By the end of the year the students had raised over $2,000 for the otters. More importantly, they now had a degree of self-confidence which they lacked before. They could speak about the otter and its problems with authority, take action on their own (with adults merely serving as facilitators), and express a newfound enthusiasm for school work, which now permitted them to learn critical skills across multiple disciplines while simultaneously taking actions whose results the children could plainly see. Several children who earlier struggled with concentration problems or disruptive classroom behavior became intensely focused, serious and self-confident through their work on the project.
Since the project’s first year, it has broadened significantly across multiple fronts. Gail Shell, the school’s Director of Computer Education, who was so instrumental in conceiving the program and figuring out how to maximize the impact for Gateway’s students, sadly passed away from cancer in September 2003. Still, the solid foundations Gail established endure and the program continues to grow, affecting the lives and outlook of increasing numbers of Gateway children. Outlined briefly below are some of the changes to the program during the past two years, ending with an especially noteworthy triumph in June 2004:
a) Expansion: Beginning during the program’s second year, 2002-2003, the number of conservation classes at Gateway expanded from one to two with the addition of a class dedicated to the Beluga Whale. Many of the students in the Beluga Whale class worked previously to support the Giant Otter. As of June 2004, approximately two full classes, or 20 children, who participated in conservation education programs at Gateway have graduated and moved on to new schools, mostly mainstream institutions.
b) Fundraising Activities: Children continue to engage in a variety of fundraising activities to support the Giant Otter and the Beluga Whale. These activities range from enlisting the entire school to trick-or-treat on Halloween night to support conservation; placing spare change collection jugs in each classroom; organizing a special school luncheon where the kids prepared the food and designed the menu (each item had a price attached to it and the net proceeds benefited the animals); hosting school-wide conservation carnivals featuring games and contests designed by the students; and creating items, such as t-shirts, mugs and pens, for sale at school community events.
c) Writing Letters to Bill Bradley: The children wrote letters to Former Senator Bill Bradley where they spoke about themselves and expressed concerns about the future of the planet. Many of the kids who wrote letters had recently read Senator Bradley’s best-selling book, [u]Values of the Game[/u], as all the children who participated in the program the first year received an autographed copy of that book. The children related their conservation activities to the values Senator Bradley stresses in his work. Everyone was very excited when they received Senator Bradley’s written response. The children also received a video clip in which Senator Bradley commended them for their conservation efforts.
d) Creating PowerPoint Presentations and Visiting Other Schools: The student participants designed PowerPoint presentations featuring their endangered animal. Initially, they delivered their work to a Gateway school-wide assembly. Beginning in the spring of 2003, as the children’s confidence levels rose, they began to visit mainstream schools to deliver presentations and brochures, bolstering their public speaking skills and confidence, yet also helping to interest and enlist other children in the conservation cause.
e) Interactions with AZA Institutions and Scientists: Each year the Gateway conservation classes take a field trip to an AZA institution which features the animal the students are working to support. For the past three years, the otter class has visited the Philadelphia Zoo while the Beluga class has visited Mystic Aquarium for the past two years. While visiting these institutions, the students go on behind-the-scenes tours which enable them to see their animals up close. They also meet with AZA professionals working to study and save the animals in the field. Through the Philadelphia Zoo relationship, the children were also introduced to Dr. Graham Watkins, Director of the Iwokrama Institute for Rainforest Conservation in Guyana. Dr. Watkins visited the school and met with the children during the month of January 2003. He discussed the challenges of solving resource conflicts between native villagers and endangered animals, as well as the network of junior wildlife clubs he established to help young Guyanese children become responsible stewards of their communities. As a result of Dr. Watkins’ visit and subsequent activities, the Gateway children learned about the complex processes involved in solving conservation-related problems and how possible solutions must carefully balance the needs of all stakeholders.
f) Pen Pal Relationships with Native Children in Guyana: Through the assistance of Dr. Watkins, the otter class began writing to pen pals in Guyana. The pen pals live in the Rupununni region of Guyana in small, isolated villages where houses are constructed of mud and kokerite leaves. Gateway students now have a much better understanding of the lives children lead in a part of the world where lifestyles are very different from what they are accustomed to. Yet they also realize the shared concerns which both groups of children hold for the future of the planet. Recently, the Gateway students arranged to donate a laptop computer to their pen pals. Next year they will be able to have much more frequent communications with their faraway friends.
g) Web Site: Beginning in Spring 2003, several Gateway students created a web site outlining their activities to save the Giant River Otter. The site had sections describing otter physical characteristics and habitat, as well as the pen pal relationship with children in Guyana and interactive sections for visitors to pose questions for scientists or suggest a solution for a complex problem affecting otter survival. During the Spring of 2004, the students submitted their work to the ThinkQuest New York City competition, a prestigious contest for websites created by teams of New York City students. The Gateway entry, viewable at [url]www.tqnyc.org/NYC040957[/url], won first prize of 96 entries in the 4th-6th grade division at an awards ceremony on June 8, 2004. Though such an accomplishment would be tremendous for any group of children, it was particularly significant for the Gateway kids, many of whom have spent their entire lives working to overcome learning differences.
One common theme which runs through all the conservation-related activities at Gateway is how the ability to formulate, evaluate and express ideas in support of a common, real-life goal can impact children’s lives. Many of the students at Gateway entered into the program lacking confidence and feeling uncertain about their self-worth and ability to function as productive citizens in the future. Now that they have had the opportunity to make a difference and can see the real-world impacts of their activities, the children feel empowered, enthusiastic and confident. They are also able to look beyond themselves and feel comfortable sharing their ideas with others, whether that be through a pen pal relationship, visiting other schools for a PowerPoint presentation, or creating an award-winning website.