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ILP Placement Confusion

November 4, 2013 by lpahomov Leave a Comment

Many students faced confusion regarding their ILP placement this year. SLA’s ILP program is a program that allows sophomore and junior students to go out into the world and pursue their interests outside of the classroom for two hours a week. Students can have internships, take classes, and take part in various projects. The purpose of ILPs is to get students out into the world to pursue their own individual interests, based on the thinking that high school is real life. Many SLA students were not placed in ILPs at the beginning of the school year. SLA students can find their individual ILPs on there own, or have SLA place them in one. This year there was some confusion regarding ILP placement with certain students.

Sophomore Nebil Ibrahim tried to get an ILP at the academy of Natural Sciences, but he had trouble getting information on the application process, and simply submitting his application.

Sophomore Naomi Fecher-Davis didn’t have an ILP until recently. “Jeremy told me two weeks ago that I might have an ILP,” Many sophomores and juniors were not placed into ILPs at the start of the year, and some are still uncertain about them.

In the past SLa has hosted an “ILP Fair” which is an exposition showcasing possible ILPs to SLA students. The fair usually takes place towards the end of the year. There was no ILP fair in 2013, which made it more difficult for students to find out about ILP opportunities.

“The reason we didn’t have an ILP fair was that in the past students haven’t used it productively,” said SLA ILP coordinator Jeremy Spry.

Placing SLA’s sophomores and juniors can be difficult. SLA tries to match each student with an ILP that relates to their individual interests. Many students are interested in working at law firms, or having medical internships. These are difficult for high school students to get, especially because many of these places don’t take interns younger than 16 or 18.

There is also a lack of available ILPs. Some medical ILPs won’t take SLA students because they didn’t work out in the past. Because of the economy there are less ILP opportunities at certain places. SLA wants to expose students to these opportunities, but doing so poses challenges to both students and teachers.

List of some ILP places

Course Profiling – Biotech

November 2, 2013 by lpahomov Leave a Comment

By Nicholas Murray

Staff Writer

Biotech is a course that requires many skills like learning how to run DNA through gel, which is not as simple as it may sound.

This senior course may be a hard course to take, but that should not discourage juniors from signing up for it, or seniors from switching to it.

Biotech is short for biotechnology, focuses on the use of biological processes for industrial use.

This course is not as popular compared to electives like Ceramics or Digital Video, because not everyone needs biotech for the career they have in mind. But it does fill a need for some students.

When asked why she chose this course, Senior Maria Latorre commented that for her, “I’m going into the medical field so biotech is one of the things I would have to learn.”

This was not the only reason she chose the class.

“I don’t have to be in biotech, I can take it when I go to University for pre-med, but I like science, a lot and biotech is one of my favorite kinds of science.”

The second reason is more straight forward. Many people think biotech is an impossible class. This is not not necessarily true.

It is true that Biotech can be hard. Senior Teige Dougherty, another Biotech student, said that, “Oh yeah, Biotech is insanely hard.”

This is not the general consensus among the class though. Ryan shaw responded that, “Biotech can be hard at times.”

Despite this, the class is not impossible. Maria explained that, “ Mr.Vk isn’t a hard teacher. He is really chill and understanding, if you have a question he will help you, even if you are stuck for a whole period.”

Indeed, biotech teacher, Matthew VanKouwenberg did not make the class to give everyone a hard time. The class was created because, “its the field of science that I feel will have the biggest impact on our society for the next few decades.”

Biotech is not an easy class, nor is it necessarily for everyone to take it, but it is a class that should at least be considered by those who enjoy science and would like to study it further.

Ultimate: Making History Every Year

October 31, 2013 by lpahomov Leave a Comment

What started out as a club team dating back to the very early years of SLA is now a Masterman crushing, Radnor-beating team of ultimate frisbee players.

When the club started out, it was a few students that liked to play after school. The team has quickly developed to play in regional tournaments and contests.

Now in it’s fourth year with founding teacher and co-coach Ms. Echols and, new co-coach Principal Chris Lehmann, the team had a strong season–causing many upsets to other bigger and more established teams.

“When I first started working at SLA, frisbee was sorta like an activity that a bunch of kids would do after school–mostly student initiated. Occasionally an adult like Mr. Best or I would go out there and teach them some skills, but there wasn’t a team.” Said Physics Teacher Ms.

Echols. In the early days of frisbee at SLA, it was just a sport that teachers and students alike enjoyed play.
“A couple years after I got here some students expressed interest in having a team that plays games and tournaments and stuff like–we started playing some other schools in games and went to a tournament.”

After this first team was created, the following year the team expanded and had a girls and boys team. Both played a tournament. It was still co-ed because they still didn’t have enough players.

Starting the 2012-2013 school year, the team finally had enough players to have a boys and girls team. The girl’s team is in the spring and the boys teams are in the fall and spring. Also they have a JV and a varsity team.

“The team plays in the PADA league. It stands for Philadelphia Area Disc Alliance. That’s a league that runs all the adult leagues, and under that it has youth leagues. All of the teams in the Philadelphia area participate through them. They take care of all the insurance and other things that would come from the district. We’re totally separate from other school district sports”

Philadelphia has a tight knit ultimate network and plenty of teams to play like Caroll High School, who they just beat for their last game of the season.

“Lehmann has lofty aspirations for the team, which I think is great and is good for a lot of kids. He’s upped the level of intensity and made it a serious sport as SLA–that’s been good.

Senior Captain Rob Jenkins agrees that Lehmann has made the team more intense through his experience with coaching and more vigorous practices.

With the team coming off of a big win, they will continue to practice every morning at 6:30a for their spring season.

Ghost of Sanchez Haunts SLA

October 31, 2013 by lpahomov 1 Comment

By Kenyatta Bundy

Staff Writer

Today students at Science Leadership Academy walked into school to an unexpected surprise; the entire school decorated for today October 31st better known as, Halloween.

With caution tape on the wall, spider webs on the starewells, and spooky music playing on the third floor, no Science Leadership Halloween decoration would have been complete without the “Ghost of Sanchez”.

Junior Max Amar-Olkus and Senior Joseph Tartaglia posted black and white photos of former history teacher Juan Sanchez, in obscure places around SLA.

When asked about why they posted up these pictures of Sanchez, Olkus and Tartaglia had this to say, “Part of it was in remembrance of one of our fallen heroes and the other part was because it was funny. To make the school scary, any normal ghost picture wouldn’t have worked so, Sanchez’s ghost picture would be a perfect solution to our problem.”

Due to the fact that Sanchez left last year, the Freshman of this year have no clue who the man in these pictures are.

Olkus and Tartaglia had this to say to the Freshman, “Now you know who Sanchez is from the pictures in the hallway. So my question to you is, who do you think the man behind the picture was? What do you think of the deeper meaning of us putting up the pictures was? They say you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover, but really it’s a very deep and complex book, that you can judge by it’s cover. It’s only a cover.”

After joking about why the pictures were really posted Joe had a simple message directed to Mr. Sanchez, “We miss you. Come back. Why would you leave? Pittsburgh isn’t even all that great.”

“He’s in Boston,” Olkus said.

“Boston’s worse,” Tartaglia replied.