Every school seems to have some. The kids whose eyes glaze over when the teacher talks for more than 5 minutes. The kids whose attention span seems minuscule. The kids who struggle with making positive choices time after time because they are bored or discouraged. The kids who rarely turn in written assignments.
These students can get stuck with negative labels and may find themselves in the administrator’s office, detention or hearing their parents or guardians being informed of their behavior. These students are still developing key skills, which may detract from the learning environment for the others, so some school districts create separate educational spaces for these at-risk learners.
The irony is that some of these students are the brightest and most creative students in the classrooms they disrupt. Their behavior may stem from the fact that they learn differently. The typical reading, writing, memorizing and reciting methods of learning may not work for them. An analogy can be found in learning to read. Typically, people learn to read using their eyes, but blind people must learn to read using their fingers, their sense of touch. Many have heard the adage, “Experience is the best teacher.” There truly is more than one way to learn something.
Simply providing a separate space for these students is not always the answer. It may alter the learning environment for teachers and traditional students, but the isolated students need extra support.
Some people may remember an alternative education attempt made in Mason County several years ago. The Ludington Public Schools leased a facility in which to educate the district’s at-risk learners. This experimental school was named “Journey.” Journey operated as a Shared Educational Entity between Ludington and Scottville, and Ludington was the fiscal agent. The majority of the 140 students were from these schools and Baldwin, with others from across the West Shore Educational Service District.
Jamie Bandstra, former Journey principal, had high praise for the teachers he described as devoted, hardworking and compassionate. He asserts, “I know the learning opportunities we were able to offer changed the lives of many students for the better.”
Bandstra reported that Journey received a federal grant of a million dollars to incorporate a social and emotional learning model called the Leadership and Resiliency Program (LRP). This enhanced the effectiveness of the “project-based learning (PBL)” that the teachers employed. PBL is a teaching philosophy where students engage in hands-on learning.
Although Journey had a positive impact on its students, there were challenges. Bandstra recalled some of them. “The only facility available at the time was a commercial building never designed or constructed for use as a school. It presented many barriers for the education we had envisioned. There was no funding for the extensive remodeling required, even for the maintenance needed for such a large building. Although the school accepted students from other districts, the Ludington district bore the lion’s share of the project – financially as well as from a reporting aspect. The students tended to do less well on state standardized testing, which reflected on Ludington district reports rather than the students’ home districts. It was unfair to Ludington and not a sustainable model.”
The school closed in 2014.
The vision, however, remained very much alive. And the need never diminished. Education has never been or ever will be a “one size fits all” endeavor. The community’s concern for the students and the dedication of the teachers was firm. Prior to the closing of Journey, the superintendents from several area school districts had approached the Ludington superintendent with the wish to begin again. With the same vision, but with a different administrative structure, different funding and a different building in a different location.
Bandstra was asked to take the vision forward with a group of like-minded community members. A leadership board of volunteers was formed to look for an appropriate facility and to raise the needed funding. Among the members of that leadership board were Margaret Mitchell, retired from a 40-year career in education; Doug Bacon, an engineer retired from a long career in school facilities; Wayne Brown, a well-respected local insurance representative; Chip Gwillim, an education administrator; and Doug Fallis, who was the first board president. Additional early leadership came from Brenda Anderson, Deb Plowe and Becky Stone who were Journey’s office manager, middle school teacher and counselor, respectively.
Mitchell recalls Bacon joined the board in 2012 and “spent close to five years fundraising and remodeling Foster’s Market in Scottville into the school now known as Gateway to Success Academy, aka G2S.”
The building is as non-traditional as the project-based learning is. Happy to describe it, Bacon explains, “Gateway classrooms surround a central atrium lounge where students can socialize. When they come to school in the morning, the first thing many of them do is greet and hug each other in the lounge. Classroom walls have retractable garage doors to adjoining rooms, allowing flexibility for expanded space when needed. Gateway provides laundry facilities and shower facilities for students who otherwise have no access to those necessities.”
Superintendent Melissa Zumbach explained, “Yes, we have a few homeless students here – the definition of homeless being understood as displaced – not in a home with their parents. That can mean living with grandparents, using a hotel or couch surfing with friends. But we’re family here. We treat everyone like part of the family. We eat together. We learn together. We relax together. We try to provide what the students need to have a stable center for their lives. We use the services of a social worker for our students and a family link at the United Way to help find legal documents (such as birth certificates) when necessary."
When Journey closed in 2014, it had been hoped G2S would open that fall. But it was 2016 before G2S opened its doors to students, and they returned to their former schools in the meantime. The local districts agreed to provide specialized support for the students during the interim. It was a challenging time for
