Lauren Nicolella

Eric Valenti

A&E Editor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With the new SLAmbassadors being chosen and their trips only a few months away, they may have a massive amount of questions and fears about traveling to a new country. With the help of a few SLAmbassadors, this article will hopefully act as a guide for these students embarking on their new European journey.

Feeling Safe

Traveling to a new country is definitely something both amazing and scary. However, traveling with ten other students and two adults is also this gateway of becoming an adult. For the trip, you’re mostly on your own and at times you need to be able to make decisions of whether or not you want to try something new. You are also put into this situation where it’s up to you to start the conversation and meet new people in a foreign environment. Wright explained an experience while in Germany where she made a decision that ended up getting her lost and she wished she knew her German better and could’ve asked her advice before she made a decision.

“One time I wandered off at night and the Germans explained that was kinda dangerous and not to do that. If you feel unsafe you should always keep in contact with your host and just make sure you always tell them where you are.”

This advice is similar to what most people are told here in America but it’s good to recall it. Senior Taylor Green went on the Poland trip in the previous year. Green wanted to tell anyone who is a minority to be ready for some ignorance on the Poland trip.

“If you’re a person of color just prepared to not be in a not as diverse community like SLA. But don’t be afraid to try new things, new foods and always be friendly.”

Being alone in either of these countries can be scary. But don’t worry because you have about ten other students with you and two chaperones that you can contact if you feel unsafe. You also have your host, who is true of the expert of your European country.

Hosting vs Being Hosted

One of the most intimate parts of the SLAmbassadors trip is living with one another. When you travel to your designated European country you’ll have to live with your host or someone else if your host is unable to. Some hosts parents may not speak English, and you’ll be in that awkward space where your host has to translate everything you say. You’ll also have to shower, sleep and eat with your temporary family. The best advice people gave was to get to know your host. Senior Jayla Wright explained that you should try talking about some more meaningful stuff with your host.

“You should try to open up to your person so you guys can have some sort of connection or find something in common so that you can have at least one thing you guys can talk about. If you can’t have anything to talk about then it’s gonna really suck because your gonna spend a lot of time together alone.” Wright stated.

Opening up is a great way to expose yourself to your host and get rid of the uncomfortable awkwardness that will come. But be careful and don’t overshare, Junior Sam Gulaterrii, who traveled to Germany in the past year, made the mistake of telling his life story.

“As soon as I got to his house, I realized that we were both similar people and we kinda hit it off really quick. We just talked in his room for like three hours about everything that we enjoyed, because we had seventeen years of life to talk about and we ran through all of it and then we had nothing to talk about.”

Make sure you find a balance. The two of you will be around each other a lot and if you don’t find a balance you may find yourself unable to get along with each other. You should not feel pressured to be their new best friend but make sure you make them feel comfortable when they come and live with you too. Junior Nasya Ie traveled to Poland in the previous year and believed she was able to find this balance of talking to one another.

“Communication is key. One of the other hosts didn’t communicate very well and I think that’s super important. Just make sure you talk in general, before and when you do meet them. Send photos of you and your family so that you have a strong foundation before the meeting.”

If you have a bad relationship with your host and just want to be acquaintances with them, that’s alright. It’s not as much as your host but the country itself that you should really prepare for.

Expectations

Wherever you may travel you may feel like you don’t know where you’re going. You’ve never been to Germany or Poland and you probably don’t know much about your trip. Senior William Huang traveled to Germany in the past year and gave some basics on what you should do before leaving.

“Do some research on activities or things you want to do because there will be free time and you’ll be in a situation where they ask you what you want to do. And you want the most out of the experience.”

Making sure that you pick out a few places that you want to visit is extremely important, especially in this case. There are about three days where the host has to show you around and most people have stated that their hosts really didn’t have much planned. It may be due to how alike their country is to Philadelphia. The only difference is that people are able to tell that you don’t belong there. Ie was surprised to see what Poland was like.

“They were modern than I expected and it reminded me of Philly. The people were really nice of course some of them were mean. Some of them would just stare at you. They didn’t want to give us change for larger bills and didn’t like to have to speak English.” Ie stated.

Suitcase

Almost everyone packs the nights before and when they pack you may feel overwhelmed. You may come to realize that you don’t know what to pack. It’s because of all the things you have to consider, an example is the gift you should bring for your host.

“You should get them plenty of American foods they can’t get and make something personal for them and get gifts for their whole family. My host gave me a journal that she made herself. So I did the same for her.” Wright stated.

For daily clothing, if you’re going on the Germany trip, interestingly enough the SLAmbassadors to wear shorts and short sleeve shirts. If you’re going on the Poland trip, you’ll probably have to do Model United Nations. Model UN also is known as Tomun in Poland, is an event in Poland where all the students represent different countries and have to discuss different political issues. Ie highly recommended that you wear some fancier clothing.

“Nicer clothes. They all wore dresses and suits during Model UN, they all just looked spot on. Make sure you have a heavy and light jacket. You should pack all the necessary products because sometimes it’s annoying having to run around for basic stuff.” Ie stated.

Regrets and Places to Be

It’s your last day of exploration of either Germany or Poland. You’ve packed up all your things. All the events and exciting things that happened on this trip have become memories. All the things you’ve seen have only become pictures. Once you return home all you’ll be thinking about it is: I wish I did more. Green excitedly told how she wished she had more of a chance to just have fun.

“Something I wish I did more of is…. I want to say party but I don’t wanna say party. For the Poland trip a lot of it was Model United Nations which was cool but when you go to a Foreign Country you don’t wanna do work or talk about world issues. You just wanna have fun and sightsee.” Green explained.

Spending time with your host can be really fun and exploring the city can be enlightening but sometimes just being able to dance around with your host can be really cool too. It’s also fun to do things you can do in America but in Europe.

“They have so many escape rooms and make sure to get Pierogies and tomato soup. Also their riverside it looks nice for pictures. They also have a gate where you can get put a combination lock on a gate as people do in France.” Ie told happily.

Trying new food is essential when traveling to a new country. Traveling to a new country is also a great chance to learn a new language and expand your understanding of the culture your about to learn about. Green continued to tell that she wishes she had a chance to learn the language.

“I guess I regret not learning the language as much as I should have. I was able to say ‘hi’ and “bye” to people but I wish I could have more of a conversation because the language barrier was definitely there.”

The SLAmbassadors trip can be really scary. It’s your chance to create a relationship with someone over 100,000 miles away. But make sure before you go to remember to be safe and have fun.

Taylor Green

A&E Editor 

What’s better than food for a dollar within walking distance? Literally nothing. That’s the beauty of the newly popular Ritual app. It has taken many big cities by storm in the past month, Philadelphia being one of them.

 

Ritual is a food app created by Canadian businessman Ray Reddy that eliminates the hassle of ordering food online. It gets rid of paying for delivery and any other inconveniences that one might face while waiting for their food to arrive to them. Some would say that it’s more convenient than apps like UberEats.

 

Ritual has been seen in quaint food places not only around the city, but in the vicinity of SLA. These places tend to be within a five or six minute walk, such as Fuji Mountain Sushi, Dolce Carini Pizza and the infamous Golden Lake.

 

The main appeal of the app is the Dollar Fest, a promotion that the app does every Wednesday that allows you to order certain meals from restaurants that are only one dollar. For example, you can get a poke bowl from The PokeSpot and even pretzel bites from the Philly Pretzel factory all for one dollar.

 

Another reason that Ritual became such a craze is because when you refer a friend, they get $10 of order credit when they first sign up. They don’t even need to use a credit card to buy something. You can even get $5 off on your first order at a new restaurant. This has made people speculate the reliability of the Ritual app, but so far no one has had any complaints.

 

Unlike other food apps, Ritual has a reward system that will keep you coming back. For every time you order, you earn points. When you get to 10,000 XP points, you earn $10 credit towards your next order. This is a good way to ensure that they’ll keep the consumers coming.

 

Senior Imani Murray, an avid Ritual user, raves about the App. “I’ve shared my code with so many people throughout the school. I’ve earned a lot of credits that I’ll be sure to use later.” Murray shares.

 

The app has served as a big convenience for many students among the SLA community. Many students have already downloaded the app, and have even shared their referral code. On Wednesdays when there are early dismissals, you can find most of the students on city streets looking for a new food spot to try or trying to convince a friend to use the app so that they can get $10 credit.

 

Senior Dayanna Hughes also shares about how the app has come in handy. “Sometimes, I don’t feel like spending a lot of money going out to eat. Ritual has let me save by allowing me to use credits or even try new food places for free.” Hughes says.

 

Ritual has become a big part of the SLA community, and if it continues with this amount of success it will only get bigger. This innovative app is sure to become a new Ritual among SLA students.

 

Wanda Cobb

Staff Writer

SLA has been open for only thirteen years — far less than many other high schools in Philadelphia. However, during that time the school has established a reputation for itself — one that encourages many students to apply in the hopes of attending.  

Comparing SLA to other schools is a part of the process of becoming a high school student. But What do current students think about SLA since they´ve been attending here?

“It’s like a highly coveted school and a lot of kids want to get in, itś the only school that is project based and really don’t test that much. Most known for creative curriculum, ¨ said Junior Juliana Long.

Do people consider it a “good school?

”A lot of people think that we have a better system and believe Mr. Lehmann cares about us and the school is a really relaxed school, not really military based,” said Juliana.

SLA is a high school not like other high schools. Kids are able to freely sit in the hallways and catch up on work for classes, eat in the classes. Also, the school does not use a metal detector and uniforms aren’t required.

 

In comparison to SLA, Many Philly high schools are very strict.  Motivation high school and the Philadelphia military academy are two main high schools that are military based. Motivation, being one of the high schools, only five-hundred students attending, college rate of 60%, an attendance score of 4/10. A lot of physical incidents occurred during the time there. They also have a very strict uniform policy khaki/gray pants, white/navy blue/gold shirts, and ties. If the students didn’t wear their uniform they ´ll be sent home or have to sit down in the office for the day unless someone had what they were missing.

 

The Philadelphia military academy is a lot similar to Motivation high school. Has an enrollment of 247, 54% college rate, 3/10 attendance score and six incidents per hundred students. Based on the information given on Greatphillyschools.org.

 

Because SLA is new, many people in Philadelphia don’t know what SLA is about, or they assume it’s a school only based upon science curriculum.

“They ask what is it or they think it’s an engineering school which you have to explain. it’s hard because some people don’t know how to explain it.” said senior Brandon Hall.  

SLA is not a very well known school in the center city area. Maybe because it does not look like your average high school.  American flags, the pledge of allegiance, it looks more like an office building when people often drive by it.

“They think the curriculum only focusing on science or think its a private school.” Senior Eric Valenti added. SLA does have a regular curriculum such as Math, English, History as well as science. Itś a project-based high school, meaning the grades are based on benchmark projects as well as your other subjects.

 

In the end, however, students don’t really care what outsiders think. ¨The majority of the students in the school love it so it doesn’t matter about a public reputation.”

 

Sanaa Scott-Wheeler

Staff Writer

 

It’s a typical ride home for me. I slide down the red, dirt covered steps of 15th street station to the running tin train covered in orange.

 

As the train pulls to a stop in front of the platform, herds of middle schoolers, high schoolers and adults dressed in business casual attire shuffle into linked cars on tracks. I rush to find a seat for my journey, pull out my earphones and turn my volume on high, and music notes flood from my earbuds.

 

I scroll through my Instagram to see what I missed throughout the day. Only memes, Shade Room tea and several birthday posts appear.

 

Then, a surprise: an airdrop from an unknown sender, ¨iphone¨ pops up on my screen.

Although this is not the first time this has happened, I´m still amazed when strangers interact with me.

 

Time for some anonymous airdropping.

 

What is airdropping?

 

This feature was added to the iPhone in 2011 available on iPhone 5 and up.  It allows the user to send pictures and videos to anyone around them who has feature turned on. Most of the time, the airdrops I receive contain sexual content, a few fight videos, some twerk videos, then others that are neither sexual nor funny but just disruptive.

 

Sometimes people are aware who is being Airdropped or airdropping because there is a name, sometimes the airdrop is sent under an anonymous name of ¨iPhone¨.

 

I first learned about aidropping when I got an iphone in 7th grade. While using our phones as calculators some of my classmates would randomly send pictures to the class. Although some of it is annoying, I enjoyed it because no one ever really knew what they would get as it was never expected. The content I have saved in a folder to airdrop others contains memes and pictures I have from previous finsta posts.

 

That day on the train, I accepted the airdrop from the unknown sender. Why? Well why not. The video loads, then I see a girl in a minimal amount of clothing fixing the camera then backing away.

 

NOPE. DELETE! Does no one have wholesome memes??

 

I open my airdropped folder and scroll over the countless memes then I decide. I select one of my favorites, the list of every iphone near me pops up. Then BOOM sent.

 

¨ẄHO IS AIRDROPPING TURTLES?¨ screamed a woman sitting across from me. The entire train car burst into laughter. After my turtle sent those around me into confusion, I received four individual airdrops. I hit accept for each. Again. Why not? The train rides get boring.

 

Science Leadership Teacher Larissa Pahomov, was setting up a grade wide meeting for the freshman, she had her phone out ready to play music when she received an airdrop from ¨iphone¨. She declined the airdrop because we had been talking about how the airdrops sometimes have inappropriate content.

 

¨I didn’t want to deal with the potential mess of having a freshman send a teacher something she did not want to see,¨ she explained.

 

Pahomov story highlights how there is a potential danger and loss of privacy with airdropping. Anything can be airdropped to anyone with airdrop turned on, and you never know who might be on the other end of your line.

 

The ride has been fun. But I’m over it now, I’m getting an Android.

Zoe Kwasnicki

Staff Writer

 

The classroom was quiet except for the sound of fingers hitting keyboards and sighs of exasperation when the Wifi lagged. There was no pen on paper or squeaking erasers scratching away wrong answers because there was no paper – only laptops.

 

Even though this picture paints a normal day at SLA, student laptops are still nonexistent in the majority of high schools across America. So why does SLA have them?

 

Principal Chris Lehmann founded SLA in 2006 and expressed his belief in the importance of a 1:1 computer program between students.

 

“Fundamentally I think it’s incredibly important that we create schools that reflect the era in which we live.” He continued, “We live in a moment where the tools of inquiry, the tools of creation and publishing, the tools of networking and basically all of our core values are enhanced when kids have access to the modern tools of technology – specifically laptops as sort of the primary example of that.”

 

The laptops were always a major part of Mr. Lehmann’s vision for the school. However the laptops that would actually be used were a point of uncertainty.

 

The laptops needed to last for four years while being used extensively and also be a reasonable, fundable cost. Multiple options were considered one of which was, to Lehmann’s dismay, a Linux laptop which is a painfully basic PC laptop.

 

However, after encouragement by the School District of Philadelphia, it was decided that SLA would operate on Macbooks from Apple. This encouragement was due to the fact that the Microsoft School of the Future was going to operate on a 1:1 program. Although they would be utilizing Microsoft laptops instead – the School District was excited about the opportunity to run an Apple-based 1:1 program and a Microsoft-based 1:1 program at the same time.

 

However where the School of the Future and Microsoft had a partnership, SLA and Apple did not. SLA privately funded the cost of laptops which was roughly $180,000 annually – no small sum for a public high school in Philadelphia. Macbooks were in use at SLA from 2006 to 2013 when, due to financial issues within the School District, the fundraising money went to securing multiple faculty positions instead.

 

At that point Mr. Lehmann stated that SLA was approached by Dell, “Dell approached us, and said, ‘We want to talk to you about using the Dell Chromebook,’ and you know it was a wonderful moment in time because we needed a better solution and one that was sustainable. And not only was it more financially advantageous long term but because Dell really was so excited about what we do here, we got the partnership, which paid for multiple years of the laptops where we weren’t even worrying about that as a budget item because Dell paid for it.”

 

The partnership paid for a few years of laptops and now SLA is back to privately fundraising for the laptops which is roughly $45,000 annually – a significant price drop from fundraising for Macbooks. However, that price could drop even further with added financial support from the School District. Mr. Lehmann stated that, due to continued interest in the 1:1 learning model, the School District provided the funds for this year’s round of laptops although it has not yet been determined if that is financially sustainable for the District itself.

 

With the funding of the laptops generally secured, the next question is how the laptops are protected. The warranty is folded into the overall cost of the Chromebooks each year and covers 4-years of non-physical damages. Physical damages are, as defined by SLA’s in-house technology consultant and fix-it man Mr. Stephen Jones, a damage caused by a student either purposefully or accidentally. For example, if you accidentally spill a cup of water on your laptop that counts as a physical damage and isn’t covered by Dell’s warranty.

 

On the flip-side, a non-physical damage would be your laptop suddenly shutting down without you tampering with it. However just because a laptop is not covered by the warranty does not mean it is out of commission.

 

“I can fix anything…So there’s not any type of thing I can’t fix, but there are things I don’t fix seeing as – when it’s under warranty – I can send it back – anything else I can pretty much fix – if I have the parts I can fix it,” Mr. Jones explained.

 

After 4-years of being in constant use by a student at both school and home, the majority of laptops are out of commission. Those that are still operational are used as loaners for students whose laptops are under repair. Lehmann explained that they try to keep a quota of around 75 loaners so that students always have a laptop to work on as the lack of a laptops at SLA almost immediately excludes you from participating in class. However as the loaners are no longer covered by Dell’s warranty, when they give out and are unable to be repaired they salvaged for parts by Mr. Jones which are then used for quick repairs on other laptops. Any laptops that cannot be salvaged are determined to be obsolete and are removed from the school. What happens to the equipment after that point is unknown.

 

But while Chromebooks are operational and in-use at SLA they act as an important tool that increases efficiency by improving on the teacher-student pipeline of information. As sophomore Isabella Torres said,

 

“If we didn’t have chromebooks at SLA it would make things a lot harder and I would be a lot more disorganized than I already am,” Sophomore Isabella Torres stated. “Having a chromebook helps me be organized because everything is on my laptop already. I can just pull up docs, I can do assignments on Canvas and stuff like that whereas if I had books and papers to turn in – it would be a complete mess.”

 

Because students rely so heavily on their Chromebooks they are starkly aware of how lucky they are to have them.

 

“Not everyone has that type of opportunity to get technology of their own to help their education,” Sophomore Cameryn Roach stated.