Features

Mo Kelly

Staff Writer

On the first of February this year, CTE coordinator Abigail Shagin departed Science Leadership Academy for a position outside of the School District of Philadelphia. Surprised by her mid-year departure, many CTE students wondered who would replace her. . Some wondered if they would be even getting a new teacher this late in the year.

The answer came a few weeks later. On March 4th, the SLA community welcomed Torian Ugworji as their new CTE coordinator.

Ms. Shagin left SLA to work at SAP, an engineering firm in Philadelphia. She worked in communications there before accepting the position at SLA. Now, she is doing administrative work there.

As soon as Ms. Shagin gave her notice to the school,  the hunt for a new CTE coordinator was on.

Digital Video teacher Anna Walker-Roberts was one of the teachers working to find a replacement. She says that after having Shagin around for a year and a half, they knew exactly what they wanted in her replacement.

“We were looking for people that had an interest in teaching… also someone who has administrative skills and could help organize and manage the internships. And of course someone who had at least an interest in either engineering or digital video.”

After interviewing many candidates, Ms. Walker-Roberts, along with Engineering Teacher John Kamal and Principal Chris Lehmann,  decided that Mr. Ugworji was the best fit for the job.

Mr. Ugworji grew up in Richmond, Virginia. But, in middle school, he moved to Savannah, Georgia, which is where he attended high school.

“I remember thinking that I was going to live on the beach, and that my school was on the beach. I was sad to leave my friends, but excited to be on the beach,” Mr. Ugworji said about moving to Savannah. To his dismay, he did not actually live on the beach.

During high school, Mr. Ugworji began to try many new activities including dancing, acting, and art. He told the story of how he began dancing, or more specifically krumping, to many of his classes when he first arrived.

“I went to a party and decided that I was going to dance, cause that’s what’s cool, but I didn’t know how to dance,” he explained.

“People mistook my flailing arms as krumping, so I started learning krumping, and I got introduced to breakdancing.”

He graduated Virginia Commonwealth University in 2014 with a degree in Kinetic Imaging.

His natural creativity has led him through many different kinds of jobs. One of his most notable ones was working as the video director for an app. The app, called Think of Us, aids foster kids after they age out of the system. This app helps foster kids build a support system, educates them on “adult” concepts like rent, mortgage, etc, and coaches them through life after foster care.

Mr. Ugworji heard about the open position at SLA from a  teacher friend. He said he immediately knew he would be a good fit for this building.

“I like the culture of this school,” Ugworji says about SLA, “The core values are things that I think are very vital to the growth of human beings and are things we do subconsciously.”

Sophomore Lily Bromley has Ugworji in her Intro to Dig Vid class.

“He does a lot to connect with us as teens. I think he’s going to do a good job at connecting the things that teens take picture for, social media with photography… He’s actually making it relevant to today.”

Coming into a new school halfway through the school year has proved to be challenging for Mr. Ugworji.

“It’s weird. If you’re coming into a structure or system that you’re not apart of, it can be very confusing, but you get the hang of it after a while.”

Although he is a new face around SLA, the community has taken to him immediately.

“He has a good ability to connect with students, especially one on one… He’s able to make classes fun and make the kids laugh, which is important,” Walker-Roberts says.

Lily Bromley

Staff Writer

Axe body spray; a scent that seems to have followed me from middle school to my sophomore year of high school and if you have ever seen an Axe commercial, it is easy to see why. Axe is advertised as a chick magnet, a magical tool that can make even the biggest loser irresistible to women. And for some reason, these commercials actually seem to work. They present the idea that women want hyper-masculine men and then bring out the product that can single-handedly turn anyone into a walking Foreman grill.

 

So the real question is, do girls even like Axe?

 

The short answer is mostly no. I mean, I don’t. After having someone mistakenly spray it into my face in middle school, I haven’t really cared for it. The thing is, I don’t mind men’s cologne in general, but I think that something about Axe encourages boys to drench themselves in it.

 

“It’s kind of like how girls wear perfume or makeup as a way to express themselves, it’s just a way to make yourself feel more jazzed up,” Says Sophomore Zoe Kwasnicki. “I think it is cool that guys want to express themselves, but it can be too much.”

 

There aren’t many self-care products on the market specifically for men, and the ones that there are (like Axe) seem to hyper-masculinize themselves as a way to counter the idea that taking care of yourself, or caring what you look (or smell) like is a feminine thing to do. Axe is a company that obviously profits off of toxic masculinity and the insecurities of young men, and they have been called out for it many times. In 2017, Axe launched a campaign focusing on toxic masculinity and how it affects young men. While I totally agree with this campaign, I still think that Axe benefits from the messages of their earlier ads.

 

Take their scent “Dark Temptation”. The scent claims to be “chocolate scented”, and that it will attract women because women love chocolate. Or “Vice” which claims that it turns “good girls bad”. Axe’s commercials go from exaggerated, to outright crazy. One commercial claims that Axe is “Anti-Invisible Spray” for men who are ignored by women, while another shows a high school teacher coming onto her student once he uses Axe.

 

Axe has completely stopped airing commercials, so unless someone has a habit of checking their website, they would have no idea about this anti toxic masculinity campaign. In this way, Axe has a backing if someone claims that the brand is sexist or profits off of men’s insecurities, without actually changing the kind of messages people associate them with.      

 

“I think that is it sad that fragile masculinity makes men feel like they have to be obnoxious and overpowering- like Axe,” Says Sophomore Kofi Kohl.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

 

From a young age, men are told to be assertive, powerful, and strong. They are told to speak loudly and to not allow themselves to be ignored. Axe body spray seems to be a way that young boys make themselves more noticeable, even the commercial advertises itself as “Anti-Invisible Spray”.

 

Sophomore Mo Kelly remarks, “I think that boys think that Axe makes them strong. Even the name Axe is like strong, and they think that if they wear something like Axe they will be cool and strong too.”

 

Over the past few weeks, I have been asking all my close friends what they think about Axe, just to see what the general population of SLA had to say about it, and they all had the same answer, they didn’t like it. So how can we explain the constant lingering smell of Axe that fills SLA every day? The truth is that only 3 or 4 people need to wear it for the smell to make its way around the school.

 

So the next time you go to spray yourself with “Dark Temptation” or “TWIƧT” (yes, it’s really spelled like that), remember the connotations that come with wearing Axe, and also remember that no one else really likes it.

 

Juliana Long

Staff Writer

 

It’s the spring semester — which means it’s already time to start thinking about next year’s classes.

Course selection can be tricky and worrisome for students, even with how easy it is to complete at SLA. For SLA Junior, Mia Concepcion, the importance of senior year course choice is based on colleges’ perception of how rigorous a student’s transcript will appear.

“I’m heavily influenced by needing to fulfill my credits in order to graduate and also wanting to look good for colleges, like taking extra classes that I don’t need so I make a good impression on them,”
Similarly, fellow junior Krystal Cabrera is also influenced by future perceptions of her course choice.  “Especially now in junior year it’s important for me to pick courses that will eventually help me in the future,” says Cabrera. “Course selection this year felt more important to me since it’s the last classes I’ll be taking in high school.”

As if choosing courses that will reflect on your academic year positively isn’t stressful enough, the Philadelphia School District shook things up for both students and teachers this year by implementing a new course selection system. It was designed to be completed through InfiniteCampus for all Philadelphia School District schools as opposed to the google form traditionally used at  SLA.

Math Teacher and Roster Chair Sunil Reddy, who designed the original system, shared his experience with learning and teaching the new system to SLA advisors.

“I was really worried that it was going to be hard for the students to understand even if I were presenting it to them,” he admitted.

Whereas the Google Form process designed by Mr. Reddy was straightforward and the course names matched the descriptions in a logical way, the new Infinite Campus system used the same course names for every PSD school, making it difficult to identify which class was which.

The situation was made worse by the condensed timeline.

“The School District kind of presented it to the roster chairs really quickly and said, ‘The system is going to open for the students in two weeks and it will lock two weeks after that,’” Reddy explained. “So I had to put together a lot of materials the quickest I could to show the advisors so that they could do their best.”

Junior advisor Daniel Symonds had a similar, if not more opinionated, take on the School District’s decision to implement a more complicated system.

“I find it to be a rather tedious exercise that reminds me of the difference between educators, who want students to learn meaningful things, and the School District, who doesn’t understand how paperwork demoralizes kids,” he says.

About his experience walking his advisees through the course selection process this year, he says that “Everyone was crying.”

“Metaphorically crying,” he adds as an afterthought.

It’s become clear that the majority of SLA community members aren’t thrilled about the new InfiniteCampus course selection system. Things are crazy enough here as it is, and routine changes are less than ideal.

As a community, we can only have faith that we will become used to and master the new system. Because if there’s one thing SLA is good at, it’s adapting to change.

Jayla Wright

Copy Editor 

Walk down the hallways of SLA and you’ll see little white devices nestled in students’ ears. Peak into a classroom and you may see sets of kids huddled together, sharing pairs of the wireless gadget. Look even closer, and you’d find more in other kids’ ears only obscured by intentionally obstructing hair and hats. These gadgets  are called AirPods, and they’re taking over SLA.

After the holiday season, gifted AirPods filled SLA. Underclassmen were affected most by this trend. Some wearing them openly, others in secret.

Memes on Instagram also appeared around the same time and portrayed AirPods users as rich, arrogant, and snobby. As these memes gained popularity, so did the stereotypes they created.

Despite this, freshmen Eamonn Carey openly wears his AirPods with pride. Ask him about his AirPods and he’d probably reply in a tune similar to the Instagram memes. However, despite his behavior, Carey does not follow the stereotypes at all. In fact, he doesn’t have a single sense of superiority. He simply finds the stereotype funny.

The memes also make Carey, as he put it, seen as “Kinda like an a**hole, but that’s okay.” The negative reputation of AirPods users causes two responses from the people who are mocked. Either laugh it off like Carey or modestly wearing the earbuds like Freshman Sophia Florence.

Florence prefers to hide her AirPods behind her long hair or refrain from wearing them in the hallways.

“I’m not the one to wear the AirPods to show people that I have them. I’m not like that.” says Florence.

Florence doesn’t flaunt her AirPods to avoid making those without them upset. She considers that people who can’t afford the devices might feel bad if she shows off what she has.

The Instagram memes have created negative connotations with AirPods. Has anything good come from this product?

Blue stream would have to say yes.

“In our stream, if you have AirPods and the other person doesn’t, we share.” States Florence.

Senior Eric Valenti SATs Mr. Kay’s freshmen class and believes AirPods, “worked as something that brings the freshmen closer in an odd way. It gave them something to joke about. I feel like when people meet each other the easy thing to do is always bring up a joke or something funny so I guess them having AirPods in is a conversation starter.”

“Our generation, now, we’re more connected to media. Simple social interactions are difficult. So I think that it’s positive in the way that it helps kids that are on the media more talk to each other.”

AirPods being wireless allows her to listen with classmates across the room. And to even become closer to her stream.

Despite what you have been lead to believe, AirPods can create good-natured interactions.