News

As we all know, Science Leadership Academy is run a little differently than most schools. We are not a public or private institution, but a partnership high school between the School District of Philadelphia and The Franklin Institute. Our partnership with The Franklin is key to having our school run successfully. Not only does TFI provide our school with funds to keep it running, but also provides our freshmen class with interesting mini-courses. The freshmen class’ presence there during these courses have actually always caused some issues.

Rumors flew through the halls that the newest class of freshmen have seem to fall into the unwanted tradition of getting the lecture from Mr. Lehman in the cafe about bad behavior at TFI. It sparked some unpleasant memories back to when this year’s class of seniors were freshmen as we also endured this same lecture. Our situation seemed to have been the worst case, though, as it led to a suspension. We all know that in order for someone to have actually been suspended from SLA the behavior must’ve been extreme. Therefore, in honor of the new rumors I decided to take us back in time a little to show how this seems to be an ongoing problem.

It was the beginning of freshman year of 2012. We all heard Lehman’s stern voice, something we didn’t hear that often being as we all seen him as a pretty cool principal compared to what we were all used to, come over the loudspeaker as he asked for all freshmen to come down to the cafe. We were warned that our bad behavior at The Franklin was unacceptable and had to stop. Most of us weren’t exactly sure what event sparked the lecture, but we all realized it was bad once we noticed one of our missing classmates.

Anonymous senior takes the time to explain the real story about what happened back when he was a freshman. “A woman came upstairs as a bunch of us were acting up. She had some words with me and then I responded in some worse words. I ended up being suspended from school and I received an F as my grade in TFI.”

He then went on to talk about why he feels these problems seem to occur every year between TFI and the freshmen. “As a freshmen, you leave for TFI with all of the upperclassmen laughing and mocking you as you walk out the door. It gives this mindset that it is a joke. You also see all of the upperclassmen talking about how they don’t really go to their ILP’s and how they don’t spend time during Wednesday’s working on capstones. It just seemed unfair that the rest of the school basically got a half day every week but we didn’t. It just made us not want to go or be there at all.”

Aside from whether or not these kids want to be there or not, their behavior, just as ours was, is unacceptable. Our relationship with TFI is important to the continuation and success of our school and we owe them a lot for everything they do for us. This type of behavior is really a smack in the face to them. The senior’s advice was just to “never do anything worse than the class before you”, but, I think the goal needs to be much higher than this. We need to realize all that they do and show our appreciation. As a school, we need to display behavior that has the incoming freshmen take their experience at TFI much more seriously. But mainly, we need to grow up.

Staff Writer: Dylan McKeon

This year a group of SLA students are putting together a four day long Shark Week. Taking place in Ms. Jonas’s room during Y band, the event will run from June 6 to 10th (no event is being held Wednesday due to ILPs).
The first event will be a panel held on Monday, with Amy Penney from Adventure Aquarium, Jennifer Totora from the Independence Seaport Museum, and Alanna Durkin from Temple University discussing shark health and conservations. Additionally a real shark from Adventure Aquarium will be coming for people to touch.
Tuesday and Thursday will involve the screening of two shark movies Sharknado and Shark Tale and a discussion about our perception of Sharks.
Friday will have carnival games (Pin the Fin on the Shark, Lollipop Tree, and Shark-Bowl toss) with the chance to win a big stuffed shark as well as a bake sale fundraiser for the WildAid Shark Savers program in the cafe.
“With our events throughout the week, we are able to bring awareness it different ways to SLA” said Imani Weeks one of the organizers for the event. “The panel discussion ensures people are more informed and get to hear what experts have to say about shark week. The movie days show how sharks are presented in different ways, sometimes it could be in a good way and sometimes it can be in a bad way. The carnival games makes shark finning memorable because they are having fun around the topic.”
The idea to hold a shark week at SLA came from a semester long Inquiry to Action project from American History. A group of junior decided to focus on shark finning as their inquiry project and to raise awareness decided to host a Shark Week event at SLA.
Junior Kia Dasilva is another one of the students involved in setting this event up and is extremely passionate about changing perceptions of sharks.
”I feel that it is important for SLA to celebrate Shark Week because more people need to become engaged in discussions about how to address shark health and shark conservations” she said. We need to take a stand against this issue in order to protect one of the most important sea creatures.
Sharks serve as a key part of the ocean’s ecosystem being the top predator but their low reproduction rates and the stigma that movies like Jaws have given sharks. While sharks have not yet been added to the Endangered Species list, the lack of regulations and industrial fishing over the past 60 years is slowly driving the sharks to extinction.
Kia is very proud of her work in organizing this project and excited to see how the SLA students will respond.
“To me, Shark Week is the culmination of a semester’s worth of planning and researching. It is a fun end to the year, and a summary of the different ways that SLA projects can really have an impact” she said. “I’ve learned so much about coordinating and working with my group to make this dream a reality.”

By Kiamesso DaSilva

Unsurprisingly, Trump won both the Nebraska and West Virginia primaries, but there was an interesting turn of events for democrats as self-professed “democratic socialist” candidate Bernie Sanders took the majority of delegates in West Virginia. Senator Sanders, of Vermont, has faced an uphill battle competing against established former secretary of state Hillary Clinton; the media has written him off as a lost cause since Super Tuesday and the constituents among which Sanders is popular are the largely unpredictable American youth. However, following a victory in Indiana two weeks ago, Sanders has once again triumphed in West Virginia- proof to his supporters that all is not lost.

While Clinton has the clear lead in total delegates (which include unpledged “Superdelegates”), these votes, though historically casted for establishment candidates, could sway either way depending on the popular vote. The role of superdelegates has never been so critical as in this election, and we have yet to see how they will react. For that reason, I have included only pledged delegates in the infographic below.

It’s clear that Clinton is winning, but by how much? Not a substantial enough amount to guarantee candidacy. In fact, the Huffington Post calculated that if Sanders does well in the remaining primaries (much as Barack Obama did back in 2008), he has a legitimate shot at swaying superdelegates and becoming the democratic party nominee.

Something that voters will have to consider in such a close race is whether or not they truly believe their candidate has what it takes to be not only a successful president, but successful in the general election. Democrats (along with many Republicans and Independents) have agreed that one of the priorities for this election is to defeat eventual Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Whether Sanders or Clinton is the right choice depends on you. If you’re a democrat, comment your thoughts!

Allison Kelly Staff Writer

As sad of a time as it was for all of us to say goodbye to Ms. Echols, a very exciting time for the SLA community soon followed as we welcomed a new science teacher to our family to take her place. Ms. McCullough became apart of the science department halfway through the 2015-2016 school year, which is not easy, but she has seemed to adjust quickly and successfully. So, how well do we all really know the new member of the family? Teaching at a charter school in South Philly and then transitioning to SLA is a big jump, let’s see how she got here.

First, I was interested in knowing what sparked a love for teaching in Ms. McCullough and her journey to becoming a teacher is actually a very interesting one. “This is a great question. So I actually started out in nursing school. I went to the University of Pittsburgh and was in their nursing school for two years. I really loved learning about the body and all the different diseases, but when it came to clinical and dealing with all of the bodily fluids involved, I was a little bit too squeamish. A lot of my good friends are still nurses and I respect anyone who is a nurse very much. It’s a very difficult profession but it just wasn’t right for me. I decided since I really liked learning about the human body and science that I was going to teach about the human body. So, by deciding nursing school wasn’t for me I ended up pursuing a teaching career.”

Charter schools in South Philly are extremely different than the SLA community so I was interested in knowing what stood out about our school to her that made her choose us. “Well, SLA is a great school and I actually got to come to an Educon session 2 or 3 years ago and I was very impressed with the school and the idea of project based learning. A lot of schools don’t have that aspect and it’s a very different environment from a lot of other schools. So, when I heard a position was opening up I decided that I definitely needed to go in for an interview because it’s a great place to be and there are a lot of opportunities that a lot of other schools don’t have for both the students and the teachers. It’s a really cool place to work.”

After finding out how she came to be here, I was interested in her experience at the school so far. I wanted to know how she was liking her decision to work here and also how it has been different from what she was doing before. “The staff has been very welcoming as well as the students. It has made the transition very pleasant because it is very difficult coming mid year, especially for the students to have a teacher switch half way through the year. But, I would say everyone has been very welcoming and has made it a very pleasant transition. At my old school, and I would imagine a lot of the other schools, we were very assessment based and test based, tests every week and quizzes every so often. So, coming into a project based school is very different for me in the best way. Before there was a lot of conversation around test scores and designing tests versus here where it is all unit planning and designing projects that really explore content versus just what’s the best way to ask a question about the content. So, the biggest change is being able to open up and do a whole bunch of different projects that I wouldn’t have had time for at my old school because it was so strict. It has given me a lot more freedom as a teacher and I feel that I’m able to dive deeper and let student interest guide the learning versus before where it wasn’t very flexible for a teacher.”

I was very impressed with Ms. McCullough’s journey, and after spending some time interviewing her I am not surprised at all that she has transitioned to our school well. She seems to share the same passion we all do about how we are educated here versus how we would’ve been educated at a normal high school and I know she will be a very successful teacher at this school as well as a great impact on our community. Welcome, Ms. McCullough!