SLA Media

SLAMedia is a publication of the news for the Science Leadership Academy community. Writers come from the student body in 10th, 11th, and 12th grades. We work in unison to create a functioning paper with biweekly postings on a variety of events.

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Boys Baseball Begins Third Season

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By Heather Campbell

Guest Writer

Monday, February 6th, marked the start of Baseball’s third season ever at SLA — with a team that is hoping to return to the playoffs come May.

The team has big plans, but it hasn’t always been that way.

“The first year, we lost all our first eight games…We got close a handful of times and then we thought we were going to get one and then we didn’t.” Coach Herman recalls.

“We got to this moment when it was, do you want to play baseball? do you want to be a team? and if you wanna be a team, you gotta stop playing for yourselves.”

After multiple losses, the baseball players managed to pull themselves together as a team to end the season as a 4-8 team.

At the start of the second season, the baseball team still had yet to gain the full confidence and expectation of the school.

However, “We started the season out really strong and then all of a sudden everyone started taking notice of us,” Coach Herman commented.

The Rockets have come a long way since their first season. This year’s goal for Coach Herman and the baseball team is to win and move up and out of D division.

The focus of spring training is to prepare the players with stretching, yoga, and conditioning while promoting injury prevention, as well as developing the players skills as a team.

“Right now it’s more about fundamentals of how you use your body,” explained Baseball coach Douglas Herman.

By their first game, the baseball team is aiming to be the strongest, fastest, and best team on the field.

“What we do is we run up and down the Art Museum steps a bunch of times. We do a bunch of running workouts and then we work pretty intensely on hitting and catching and fielding.” Junior and third baseman, Abe Musselman commented.

The loss of some key players is a concern for the team.

“We lost a lot of our senior players” Coach Herman admitted. “We lost our starting catcher, so we need to replace that.”

However with the many of the returning players and new freshman, Coach Herman stated there isn’t a single position that is guaranteed. Each player will have the opportunity to step up and show their skills.

“Any negative is an opportunity for another player to step up and to show us what they have.” warned Coach Herman.

The team will have a full month of playing and training together before their first game on March 23rd.

“The reason that we won last year and the reason that we are going to win again this year is because we’ve become a family and play as such.” commented Coach Herman.

“We still have a lot of the really good players from last year and the freshman are looking pretty good.” acknowledged Musselman, “I think we are going to do great this year.”

This year the team will be actively fundraising to raise the funds to pay for equipment. They will be selling Rocket bracelets, and are hoping to be able to sell them all in order to buy new baseball bats.

This year, they also lucked out with a donation of about 40 cleats by Phillies First Baseman Ryan Howard, who made a city-wide donation to baseball programs.

Public Mural Installed on 22nd Street

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By Isabela Supovitz-Aznar and DeShawn McLeod

Staff Writers

The idea began with Spanish Teacher Melanie Manual’s Spanish four class doing a unit on public art, and English and History Teacher Josh Block’s classes unit pertaining to language identity.

Being inspired by the Inside Out Project, founded by street artist JR, Ms. Manuel, Mr. Block, and many students collaborated recently to put together a street art project on the JFK bridge walls of 22nd street — between the school and neighboring grocery store Trader Joe’s.

The concept of the project is to tell a story of SLA’s culture thorough black and white portraits. The mural is made up of many pictures of students from SLA making very expressive faces, along with quotes from Mr. Block’s language identity unit.

The pictures were taken at a very close range, which is meant to give the viewer a feeling of invasion, that they are entering the subject’s perspective of the world, or see them in a new light.

“It was an experience,” Sophomore Dejah Harley stated. “Putting it up made me realize that every one’s different, and people have their own ways of thinking and their own personalities.”

The process to get permission to put the mural up was easier than the collaborating teachers expected.

“I thought it’d be complicated to get the permissions to do our mural,” said Ms. Manuel.

But after a few hours of calling PennDOT and trying to get the necessary city permit papers, they got a call indicating that it’d be perfectly fine to put up the huge images of students under the bridge.

“It was super easy in the end,” Mr. Block commented, “we just needed to call up for permission then we found out we had to call the right person.”

The posters were put up after school on Feb.16th by student and teacher volunteers.

“It was a cold day, especially under the bridge,” said Mr. Block. However, the weather did not stop the dedicated workers.

The large photographs also have quotes underneath them that are from Mr. Block’s students’ language autobiographies. The photos were taken by Sophomores Helen Kilmartin and Isabela Aznar.

The public reaction has been powerful.

Science Teacher Stephanie Dunda appreciated the quote from Sophomore Roberto Abazoski. “I was touched and moved to learn something so personal about my student through a piece of art,” she said.

Students tell Gov. Corbett to “Fall Back in Love with Public Education”

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Staff Writer

More than 400 people gathered in the Pennsylvania’s State Capitol House last Tuesday, Feb. 14th, to collectively express their feelings on the new proposed budget that would slice state aid across the board of public education.

Students, parents, teachers, and community members from across the state filled the steps of Capitol house’s Rotunda with the message telling Governor Corbett to “Fall back in Love with Public Education”.

According to Christin Clark, an organizer from the Campaign for Nonviolent Schools (CNS), “the rally was organized by students and student organizations from around the State.”

CNS is a coalition of youth organizations in Philadelphia that “aims to end all forms of violence in school without pushing students into the criminal justice system,” according to its website.

Clark says that the organization of the event was a labor of love.

“For months there were conference calls and trainings to prepare people to play all the rolls they needed to in the event.”

The event was co-organized and sponsored by the Philadelphia Student Union and JUNTOS from Philadelphia; Teenbloc from Pittsburgh, and Project Peace from Reading.

One week before the event, Governor Corbett made his budget address. For the School District of Philadelphia, the new budget would be translated into another $23.1 millions in cut for the next fiscal year. On top of that, The District has reduced opening hours of buildings, eliminating after school and sport programs to fill the gap of $72 millions deficit on this fiscal year’s budget, almost $40 of which remain to be solved before the end of this school year.

Many other school districts in Pennsylvania face similar issue with lack of funding. Chester Upland School district went bankrupt in early January as funding requests to the state were refused. Federal court judge had to order the state to subside temporary funding to help Chester Upland stay afloat. Another hearing on this case was scheduled for February 23rd.

“Students were asking the Governor to fund districts based on need, and to prioritize education spending in the budget,” Clarks commented on the purpose of the event.

“The rally’s purpose seemed pretty simple,” said senior Rashaun Williams, who participated in the rally along with a handful of other students from Science Leadership Academy. “[It] was to get Governor Corbett to change the policies on the current budget cuts on public education”

SLA has suffered from several rounds of cuts, from last Spring to last December. SLA’s spring sports season was able to be secured, despite the ongoing district deficit.

Last December, former Acting Superintendent Leroy Nunery paid a visit to SLA to discuss the budget and future of the current building. With the effect of last spring and last December cut, and the ongoing budget gap, next year’s budget seems to be more burden. However, it is remained to be seen how the new budget will unfold.

EduConcierge: More Than Just a Cart!

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Senior Jeff Kessler and Sophomore Jhonas Dunakin help EduCon attendees.

Marina Stuart and Matt Rinaldi

Staff Writer and Guest Writer

You may have noticed Senior Jeff Kessler pushing a giant computer cart in front of him through the halls of SLA in recent weeks, as he stocked up for his second year of EduConcierge.

The unique enterprise “helps people get around Philly and provides a way to provide tokens and just about everything else to make their life at the conference easier,” Kessler said, describing EduConcierge’s goal.

This was the second year Kessler made EduConcierge work. Originally conference goers needed someone to help with their travel arrangements.

As he began to help them, he saw a larger opportunity to help.

“I was sitting in the college office and thinking ‘this needs to be streamlined’ and I made a diagram, that included everything.”

Even the name makes sense, as Kessler is like the concierge service at a hotel, from scheduling people’s flights to giving restaurant suggestions and picking up people at the airport.

One thankful Educon goer told Kessler via Twitter: “Thanks for your help! You know your stuff…made our trip back to the airport a breeze. What a difference 1 person can make!”

As the program grew, parents and Kessler stepped up to help. “One of the most important things we do is boarding passes, we now print them for every single person who is flying somewhere.”

Behind the EduConceirge cart, where boarding passes are printed.

However, next year might be a little different. This year, EduConcierge is Kessler’s capstone, otherwise known as his senior project. Once Kessler graduates in June, it will be run by a group of students that Kessler trained over the course of Educon this year. The group included Freshmen Nikki Adeli and Dylan Long and Sophomores Jhonas Dunkain and Matthew Marshall.

“Jeff Kessler told me about the program and recruited me to be Assistant Concierge for this past EduCon,” Said Adeli. “It was training to become Chief Concierge for the upcoming EduCons.”

Even though this was her first Educon, she is excited about it and working more next year.

“It has been A LOT of fun! It’s gratifying to see many different educators come to SLA from all across continent to talk about making education and how to make learning for kids and teens (like me) a better experience not only in but also out of school.”

Any one from Educon can tell you how important the conference is and how much innovative thinking gets done there. It is something SLA prides itself in, and making it easier to travel to is vital to its continued success.

Adeli emphasized that student involvement is key.

As SLA students, we should all take advantage of all the resources and experiences we are allowed to have because most other schools don’t have these kinds of activities for their students to part take in.”

Educoncierge is year was so intriguing that some teachers and students of Science Leadership Academy collaborated to create a theme song for EduConcierge. The song was written by Internship Coordinator Jeremy Spry, former Librarian Josh Newman, and the lyrics by Senior Whitney Washington.

The chorus? “Educon — it’s more than just a cart.”