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As we enter another month of "School from Home", we have more Gateway news to share with you. Updates on Virtual PDP, workshops, webinars, student achievements and much much more await you in this month's newsletter. 

 July  Flashback
Gateway's Professional Development Programme (PDP) goes Virtual:
Updates on our first month!
 Our third year of  Gateway’s PDP  which emphasizes on understanding and working with students with special needs, started this month. Each month for the next 6 months, we will have week-long virtual workshops using a flipped classroom format, collaboration with members of the community and virtual observations of classroom practices. The PDP strives to not only introduce best practices for teaching struggling learners, but also supports participants as they apply these strategies in their own settings by creating professional learning communities, online sharing platforms, and assigning coaches to provide ongoing support.
We have 52 professionals from 18 different organizations and schools across Mumbai and other cities participating in this endeavor; all of which were conducted and facilitated by members of the Gateway team!

In our first month of PDP going virtual, sessions were conducted on “Inclusion, Response to Intervention and Universal Design for Learning”, “Growth Mindset”, “Foundations of Reading” and “Foundations of Mathematics”. These sessions were interactive and in addition to sharing information, facilitators also provided concrete strategies that participants could take back to their educational organizations. 

Understanding Grandstand - Expert Toby Pulanco shares her experience
Advisory member and GSoM mentor Toby Pulanco, from The Gateway School, New York shared her experiences and expertise on Grandstand with our team through a virtual meeting. She spoke about conducting the Grandstand, it’s importance and how it brings students of different ages together.  
Through this session, teachers gained an understanding of how Grandstand classes began, the goals and learning areas targeted and how to differentiate for students of varying ages and abilities.

 Sensory-Motor Team shares helpful information for virtual learning 

Creating Virtual Lessons
The Sensory-Motor department created a video on “Tips for Creating Virtual Lessons for Students with Reading Difficulties”. This video explains the “why” behind the tips,  from an occupational therapy lens and is useful to educators who have moved to virtual practices.
Proprioception Activities

Due to the nature of virtual learning and the current situation on a whole, sensory needs tend to resurface more. The following video talks about Proprioception and some short exercises that can help our students.

Watch the video on "Tips for Creating Virtual Lessons" here!
Watch the video on "Proprioception Activities" here!

Coffee with Parents

Our first “Coffee with Parents” zoom session was one filled with discussions, questions and sharing student and parent experiences since we took to virtual learning. It was a great platform for parents and teachers to meet each other after a long time, and we are looking forward to more sessions like this!

Student Spotlight
Building Capacity in Students

Last month we wrote about some amazing things our students did during the lock down. We're pleased to inform you that they continue to find ways to express their creativity and build their skills during this time!
Bakery Sessions Go Virtual!
NIOS 10th grade and High School Adaptive Program students attended a virtual bakery session with Shalini Bakshi; a professional baker and parent of one of our students. She has taught Bakery in the past to our students. During the session, she showed the students the various ingredients and equipment that she uses while baking, answered their questions and closed the session with baking chocolate chip cookies!
Guest Speaker in Business Studies Classes
Businessman Gopal Kataria, attended a virtual Business Studies class to interact with the students of NIOS 10th and answer their questions on the subject. He has a partnership firm called Norwood Modular, that manufactures electrical accessories (like light holders, switches, etc.) and has been in this business for the past 30 years! Thank you, Mr. Kataria for taking the time to share your expertise with our students!
Student Risshan Patil Performs at a Live Virtual Concert!
Sessions Live is a music-only live streaming platform, featuring virtual concerts from hundreds of global musicians. Recruiters from there stumbled across High Schooler Risshan Patil’s Youtube Channel and offered him an opportunity to perform a 20 minute live set for a virtual concert! Risshan created a set-list of popular English and Bollywood songs for this session. His first ever live virtual concert attracted over 170 audience members and everybody present had a great time!
Chef Harshita Parmar’s Instagram Ventures
Over the last few months, High School student, Harshita Parmar has taken to cooking and baking. It started as a passion for food and experimenting in the kitchen, and has resulted in her own Instagram page. On this food-instagram account, she uploads videos of her cooking in which she shares the steps to make the yummy dishes, and of course, mouth-watering pictures of the final product!

Arnav Jain’s Essay on “Racial Oppression: A disease that can be cured!”

Arnav Jain, a high school student and blogger documented his thoughts on the issue of racism through this well-written article. In this piece, he covers the recent attacks on people of African-American descent, the impact of systemic racism on a nation, the importance of educating students about race, history, culture and values at an early age to develop tolerance in them and the steps we can take that will lead us towards a more inclusive future. 

Read Arnav's Essay Here!

Parent Engagement
Building Capacity in Parents

Parent Support Group (PSG)

The Social-Emotional Team hosted a first-ever virtual PSG this month. Many parents joined in to share about some of the things they were feeling during this time. The team facilitated an activity where parents were given words such as “resilience” and “anger” and they could share an experience that related to those words. Other parents put up hearts when they resonated with what others were sharing.

They also had a lovely discussion about what we all learned through the lockdown and all agreed that our kids have shown us just how resilient they are!!

Professional Development
Building Capacity in the Team

Gateway Teachers attend Webinars by Autism Specialty Care Education Series organized by India Autism Centre.

Gateway Teachers: Radhika Chandrasekaran, Steffi Lobo, Yesha Doshi and Zara Parekh attended a webinar titled “How to address challenging behaviours in individuals with ASD” by Dr. Kathleen Stengel and Jennifer Schwartz. Participants learned about the causes of various behaviours, which behaviours to target for modification and specific strategies to modify certain behaviours that work for individuals with ASD.

Akshita Jeswani, Radhika Chandrasekaran, Rudri Joshi, Simran Advani, Steffi Lobo and Yesha Doshi attended a webinar titled 'Video Modelling and Other Visual strategies for individuals with ASD" by Dr. Kathleen Stengel and Dr. Kaori Nepo. They learnt about why visuals and video modelling are excellent tools for skill acquisition, especially for individuals with ASD and various examples and tips to make these strategies more effective.

Outreach and Community Engagements
Building Capacity in the Community

Webinar on "Nutrition & Wellness during Covid-19 & Beyond”

During this global pandemic, there is not much we can control. But what we can, is our immunity and nutritional choices. To answer questions on health, lifestyle changes, nutrition, stress, bust several myths, and give us a realistic view of what the world is heading towards, The Gateway School of Mumbai conducted an interactive webinar on 'Nutrition & Wellness during Covid-19 & Beyond'.
Our expert panel consisted of Kelly Dorfman, World renowned Clinical Nutritionist & Adjunct Faculty Member of Johns Hopkins University, John Gloster, World renowned Physiotherapist, Head Physio & Medical Coordinator  - Rajasthan Royals (IPL franchise) and Karishma Boolani - Sports Scientist, Founder of HUMANICS.

Watch The Recorded Webinar Here!

FABLe Team Conducts Workshops and Webinars

The FABLe R&D team conducted virtual workshops for teachers of partner schools - Hasanat High School and Fountainhead School. FABLe (Fluency Assessment for Benchmarking & Literacy in Education) is Gateway's phone/tablet app for monitoring and building foundational literacy skills. The R&D team did live demonstrations of administering the assessment and discussed next steps of fidelity checking for the teachers in training.
The team also conducted a webinar through SNDT University where they did live demonstrations of administering the assessment.

Gateway Math Teacher invited as a speaker by St. Xavier’s Institute of Education

Zara Parekh, a math teacher at Gateway was invited by the St. Xavier’s Institute of Education to be a speaker for a webinar conducted by the Math Department of their institute. This webinar was on “Strategies and Solutions for Boosting Mathematical Learning” and she spoke on “Augmenting student engagement in mathematics for elementary children and children with special needs”. The webinar was attended by over 650 people from across India and various other countries including Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Kuwait

Watch The Webinar Here!
Virtually Mentoring Interns!
We're happy to inform you that we currently have a few interns at Gateway. 
  • Simran Bagga has a background in Psychology and is observing classes for a month with the intention of understanding the behaviour support strategies in place at Gateway. She is currently being mentored by Gateway teachers: Gomathy Hariharan and Manda Nambiar
  • Teach for India Fellow,  Aarushi Guliya is interning for a month and will be observing classes to understand learning structures and resources being used during this time of virtual learning. She is being mentored by Khadija Rangwala.
  • Ikroop Chamba is interning with a Middle-School homeroom and will be supporting with Math classes too. She is being mentored by Prerna Dharamdasani and Radhika Chandrasekaran.
  • Harsha Base, who has interned with us before, has returned to spend her time observing and helping with High School classes. She has previously worked with an NGO where she taught children and women, and is being mentored by Nikisha Kotwal.
  • Mahek Sanghvi recently completed a B.Sc from Heriot-Watt University, Dubai and is observing students in Lower School with a focus on understanding therapy needs. She is also assisting with planning classes and is being mentored by Aditi Khanna

Gateway Community Update

Parent Testimonials!
We're happy to share some successes with you in the form of Parent Testimonials. We're grateful to our parent community for writing in to us with these stories, and will share them with you here in the form of images.

Welcome to Gateway!

We have a number of new students and team members this year and although we haven’t met them in person yet, we’ve wholeheartedly welcomed them to our community. Introducing our newest Gateway members!

Students

Latikaa Menon

Akshara Khandewale

Staff 
Shilpa Gandhle who has joined us as an Admin Coordinator

Farewell

Team member, Hatim Patel had to leave Gateway due to personal reasons. We wish him all the best for his future!

Looking Forward To

Upcoming Experiential Webinar and Workshop!
We're organizing another webinar called "The Talking Body: Creative Expression through Art & Movement". Stay tuned to our social media pages for more details!
We hope you enjoyed reading this newsletter!
For more updates on The Gateway School of Mumbai, please like and follow our Social Media accounts, linked below!
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The Gateway School of Mumbai · Sion Trombay Road · Next to Deonar Bus Depot · Diagonally Opp TISS · Govandi East · Mumbai 400088 · India 






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The Gateway School of Mumbai · Sion Trombay Road. Next to Deonar Bus Depot. · Diagonally Opp TISS. Govandi East · Mumbai, 400088 · India

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