School Photo 2010

Annual Picnic at Louise Moore Park 2009

Iron Pigs Education Day 2009

Earthday 2008

Kutztown University Matinee 2009

Mrs. Flax's Birthday 2009


Dorney Park Day 2008

Finding Ways To Succeed

by Linda Harbrecht - The Express Times

"This represents what our school is all about," says principal Marian H. Flax. "This is the kind of attitude kids with learning disabilities face every day."

Before Gateway School of the Le­high Valley opened in 1977, area students had to cope with a tradi­tional educational system that seemed to have little time or pa­tience for children with learning dis­abilities. Though inherently intelli­gent, these students were essentially doomed to a life of low expectations and underachievement, Flax says.

"After a while, that sort of attitude can really beat the kids down," she says. "They need a special setting that allows them to succeed at their own rate, and to benefit from the in­creased feelings of self-esteem that result from that success. We think it's important that the child doesn't experience failure on a regular ba­sis."

For 20 years, Gateway School has worked to provide that sort of flexi­ble atmosphere. In a no-frills series of rooms and unadorned hallways above Groman's Bakery on Second Avenue in Bethlehem, 25 students from as far north as the Poconos and as far south as Quakertown seek the success that eluded them in more traditional programs.

There are no grade classes, just groups of children categorized by age and maturity. With a student-teacher ratio of about 5 to 1, stu­dents receive lots of individual at­tention and are allowed to progress at their own pace. Behavior modification incentives reward students for good behavior instead of penalizing them for bad. Students, for example, can accumu­late credits throughout the week to qualify for special Friday afternoon activities such as bowling or watch­ing movies. In general, it's an atmosphere that isn't available anywhere else in the Lehigh Valley. And it's an approach that seems to be working. "Nearly 80 percent of our students go on to college," Flax says. "In a traditional school, about 50 percent might have dropped out of school by now out of sheer frustration."

The Gateway School is an outgrowth of a educational research project conducted by Dr. Joseph P. Render, the retired head of the Lehigh Graduate School of Education who founded Gateway. After years of studying educational models, Render found that there were very few schools in the country that dealt exclusively with learning disabled children at the secondary education level, and none in the Lehigh Valley.

Flax says an estimated 10 to 15 percent of all children in this country suffer from some form of a learning disability, a catch-all description that covers dyslexia, attention deficit disorder, auditory problems or even poor organizational skills. "Even something as seemingly minor as needing a little extra time to get to class is something you'd have to fight for in a public school, but is standard procedure for us," Flax says. "That's the kind of thing that a student would get punished for, even though he was trying his best. That's what makes them lose interest and lose hope — the constant reminders that they don't measure up."

Dr. Arthur and Barbara Hoffman of Allentown discovered Gateway School when they were searching for a place for a daughter who suffered from a seizure disorder.

"In public school, the policy is to send a child home if they had a seizure," Barbara Hoffman says. "Carolyn had about five a day, so she wasn't spending very much time in school." Hoffman learned about Gateway and talked to the administrators, who found a place for her daughter. In gratitude for their flexible response and their willingness to deal with her daughter's condition, Hoffman began teaching art at the school on a volunteer basis.

Years after her daughter moved onto post-secondary education, Hoffman continues to volunteer one day a week, and serves on the school's board of directors. That same sense of gratitude is what motivated Jerry and Nancy Bidlack of Bethlehem to underwrite the cost of a state-of-the-art computer lab, which they donated in memory of their son, Benjamin, who died at the age of 13. Although he suffered from learning disabilities as the result of a car accident when he was 5, Benjamin thrived at Gateway, his father says.

"We thought it would be a wonderful way to do something for the school that Benjamin loved so much," says Jerry Bid-lack, a retired professor emeritus of Lehigh University's music department. "He was a computer nut — he just loved them — and he was so happy at Gateway. It was the first time he found a home in the school system."

The computer lab would never have been possible without the Bidlack's support, says Flax, who explains that the school's tight budget doesn't allow for many of the extras a publicly funded school system can support.

"We are totally funded by tuition and donations and we're actively pursuing corporate and foundation support," says Flax, who characterizes the fund raising process as "a constant uphill struggle." "There's always that danger that we can't stay afloat, and that we'd have to close our doors," she says. "That would be a real shame, because I think we've made a big difference in the lives of many people."

Robert and 'Nora Bell of Allentown agree. Their son, a 1985 Gateway graduate, found success at the school after discouraging experiences in the public school system.

"There was literally no other place for him, and for other students like him," 'Nora Bell says. "Who knows how many other kids it helped? They'd have either dropped out or continued to fail their way through the school system. We should be able to expect a little more than that."

For more information about the Gateway School of the Lehigh Valley, call 610-867-8055. The school will offer a two-week summer school program to help learning-disabled children sharpen academic skills before beginning the new school year. It will run from 8:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. weekdays, July 28 to Aug. 8.

Small School Makes Big Difference

 Shirley Collins - The Express Times

They call it the hidden handicap, Marian Flax says. Children who are learning disabled look just like anyone else. But even though they're just as intelligent as those whose brains follow traditional paths, these students need extra help to do well academically.

Gateway School of the Lehigh -Valley, which Flax heads, was .founded by a Lehigh University education professor 15 years ago to provide that help for children ages 6 through 19. The school celebrated its 15^th birthday Friday with a party including birthday cake, which did not have to be brought very far. Gateway is at 531 Second Ave., on the second floor above one of Groman's bakeries.

"It was founded mainly in answer to a need in the Lehigh Valley at the time," says Dr, Joseph P. Kender, who chairs the department of leadership, instruction and technology in Lehigh's Graduate School of Education. In 1977, he says, there was no other school in the Lehigh Valley specifically for children with learning disabilities. Though the Hillside School has opened since  the inability to see letters or words in the way others do, to attention deficit disorder, in which the child has trouble focusing attention on a specific task. All have a neurological basis, according to Dr. Robert Morrow, a psychiatrist from East Stroudsburg who is on the board of the Gateway School.

Dyslexia, for example, involves "a neurological condition where the brain does not develop in such a way that ii. perceives visual stimuli in the same way normal brains do," he says. "For example, the round part of a letter 'p,' which is pointed to the right, might appear to be pointed to the left, while the long tail that hangs down, might appear, to go up."

Morrow says he understands attention deficit disorder from personal experience. Both his brother and his own son suffer from it, and "I might have had a touch of it." The hyperactivity frequently associated with ADD is a component of it, not the main factor, he says.

Morrow compares the disorder to the difference between AM and FM radio bands. On FM the static is tuned out. Most children can tune out the static around them to focus on what a teacher is saying, or a test they're taking. For a child with ADD, a teacher walking past in the .hall, a student tapping a pencil on a desk, a car passing by on the street, all clamor at once for attention, and the student is unable to tune any of them out.

"They do better in a classroom like those at Gateway,” Morrow says "where there are fewer kids and fewer distractions." The work is also divided up into shorter time spans, with, for example, only 15 minutes of math before taking a break, rather than 50 minutes.

The students study the same subjects-they would in public schools, but each has an individually designed educational program and classes are very small with a lot of one-on-one work. Morrow stresses that these kids are "just as smart as others, but they're smart in ways that are different from other people. They do in a different way, but they do it just as well."

Most Gateway students arrive at the school with very low levels of self-esteem, Flax says. "Once a child starts to fail (academically), it snowballs, and their self-concept bottoms out. They don't feel as if they can do anything."

 Once at the school, "Their self-esteem improves drastically, usually over a very short period of time," she says, "because of their success."

Gateway is non-graded, its 35 students divided into one elementary class and three secondary classes. There are more older students, Flax says, because students can do poorly in school for a long time before the problem is diagnosed. 

"In terms of working with the children," she says, "we try to determine what the child's learning style is. Are they auditory or visual or tactile? Some need at least two or three approaches." The learning styles of other children differ, too, but, "other children will automatically shift gears to their strength," Flax says. "The learning disabled child may not know what the problem is." Once the obstacle is discovered, "You try to teach little coping mechanisms, little tricks," Flax says, so the child can "learn to get around the problem."

Students generally stay at Gateway two or three years, after which many have learned enough to return to public schools. About 20 to 25 percent of the 300 students that have gone through the school remained to graduate. Of those about 40 percent go on to college. Currently, one former student is a sophomore at Carnegie-Mellon University, majoring in art. 

The school has had a nomadic existence. It started in 1977 in one room at the Congregation of the Sons of Israel on Tilghman Street in Allentown. Since then it's moved to Greenwalds United Church of Christ, Jordan Lutheran Church in Orefield, the old Lafayette Elementary School on Locust Street in Bethlehem, St. Francis Retreat on Bridle Path Road in Bethlehem, and finally, last summer, to its current location.

Most of the moves have been made when the school outgrew its quarters, according to Flax, who joined the faculty as a math teacher in 1981 and became its head in 1990. But last summer's move, she says, was because the size of their fluctuating student body couldn't be counted on to support the rent at the large building they were leasing.    

Tuition is $8,000 per year and prorated for students who enter later than September.

"The school has done very well," says Render, its founder. "I wish it had more financial support, though. We could use more support from the foundation sector. But it's not very large, and so it doesn't attract very much attention.”