The Next Door Inc.’s Therapeutic Schooling staff, from left to right: Tim Shampoe, Deborah Maddux, Ashley McGinley, Jeanie Dillon and Mark Riter (Not pictured: Anna Gatton).
The Next Door Inc.’s Therapeutic Schooling staff, from left to right: Tim Shampoe, Deborah Maddux, Ashley McGinley, Jeanie Dillon and Mark Riter (Not pictured: Anna Gatton).
At the heart of The Next Door, Inc. (TNDI) is the therapeutic schooling program. TNDI’s two alternative schools in Hood River and The Dalles are staffed by incredible, empathetic and hard-working educators and led by a phenomenal school administrator, who collectively make the success of therapeutic schooling program possible. In honor of World Teachers’ Day, TNDI would like to highlight some of their incredible teachers.
A science and art teacher at TNDI since 2013, Deborah Maddux is the longest-residing educator at the Klahre House in Hood River.
“Deb has a unique ability to get the youth excited and have fun with her and with science,” TNDI School Administrator Tim Shampoe said. “She is kind, creative and inspiring to watch educate, and she understands trauma and trauma-affected youth.” All of her classes are masterfully created with engaging, enriched projects and experiments. With the help of a master gardener, Maddux takes the youth to a plot of land, cultivates it, plans it, plants it and harvests it every year, giving them a hands-on environment to learn about how to create and sustain a food supply. The garden also has beehives from which youth harvest honey and learn about pollination.
Klahre House’s culinary arts teacher and food and nutrition coordinator, Mark Riter, teams up with Maddux in the garden. Riter has formed a farm-to-table meal structure, helping youth understand how to read recipes, figure math conversions for serving sizes and dish up lunches and snacks that contain produce from the Klahre House Garden. He empowers the youth to have a cultural experience with food that some of them would never be introduced to otherwise. His insights, instincts and care for his students are priceless.
“Mark has a remarkable ability to reach and connect with youth while cooking with them and having conversations in the kitchen,” Shampoe said. “Everyone wants to be in culinary class with Mark.”
Jeanie Dillon is the Klahre House’s newest educator. She teaches several classes in language arts, social studies and physical education along with coordinating all the special education needs of students.
Dillon created a cultural class that focuses on the Latino population in response to meeting her students’ needs academically and her Latino students’ desire to learn more about their own culture and heritage. In this curriculum, students are encouraged to immerse themselves by eating cultural foods and learning about Latino customs.
“It is that level of perspective and love of learning that gives Jeanie the uncanny ability to connect and reach her students in a way that builds trust quickly,” Shampoe said.
At the Kelly Avenue School (KAS) in The Dalles, Anna Gatton is TNDI’s lead teacher who has been with TNDI for six years. Shampoe describes her as “the driving force behind the success of the Kelly Avenue School.”
Gatton created a STEM sustainability project-based learning environment to help students have hands-on learning, enhanced by speakers and curriculum from leaders in the field. This project-based learning also allows those students who need it to catch up on extra credits.
“Anna has the ability to not only reach students in a way that helps them see their true potential, but also to have most of her students live that potential,” Shampoe said.
From the start of the 2023-2024 school year, Ashley McGinley has created connections and built rapport with students and Gatton as the youth care specialist and general educator at KAS. McGinley, who’s been with TNDI for nearly two years and at KAS since August, learns with her students, from her students and for her students. She explains things to them in a way they understand and relate to, making her invaluable and a strong asset to the KAS team.
“She has a superpower of being able to help youth regulate and understand what they are feeling in the moment they are feeling it,” Shampoe said. “She creates connections built on love, kindness, and a general caring for all of her students.
“Our team is truly amazing,” he said. “Our organization is lucky to have such amazing educators to make the world, Oregon and our communities a better place.”
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