David Gottlieb: Outstanding Student at Gateway School
By Dr. Pola Rosen
If David Gottlieb is representative of the student body at Gateway, then indeed the school deserves its fine reputation of nurturing, educating and leading its students to success. In fact, parents have been so pleased that they have prevailed on the administration to expand its current structure to include intermediate school classes.
David, an articulate student who is almost 8 years old, explained that the school is ungraded and offers very small classes with about 9-10 students. David’s favorite activities are computers, after school sports like baseball, hockey and soccer and of course, free time. Currently, he is playing sports with one teacher, clearly an effort on the part of the school to accommodate students’ individual needs.
To the question, “What’s special about Gateway for you?” David replied, “the field trips” noting that the school considers and implements students’ suggestions. One memorable trip for David was to the Empire State Building observatory. Studying water cycles in the Hudson River is an example of absorbing science lessons; David explained that the children will observe what lives in the river’s waters using only their eyes and powers of observation. The quality of the teachers is superb or, in David’s words, “they are all so nice!”
“I have different teachers for reading and math and they are all very nice to me. We’re working on cursive writing and I’m up to ‘x’. I’ve learned all the letters between the ‘a’ and the ‘w’. I’m currently reading The Boxcar Children; they are adventure stories. The children live in a boxcar and then they live on an island.”
At Gateway, children recite the pledge of allegiance as a group every day. David wants to stay at Gateway and continue through the middle school grades there because he loves the school so much.
“I get to see Mr. Cunningham every day; he knows all the children.”
For his next birthday, David hopes to get a “Bigs” component for Wii. According to David, “all the boys totally use video games when they have play dates. Every girl in my class plays with dolls except one girl who plays sports.”
The insight into the Gateway School through the eyes of a child is very special, for children are guileless and tell what they truly believe. Through David’s eyes we now know of the special position Gateway has held and is currently holding in the hearts of many children and their parents.#
