News

Mo Kelley

Staff Writer

On Friday the 25th, SLA students were greeted to guests visiting their classrooms and asking questions. Some kids were confused; who were these people and why are they in my biochem class? But to most of the SLA students, this could only mean one thing: Educon has begun.

Educon is a conference where educators from all over the country can gather in one place and talk about the way that their teaching style. Principal Chris Lehmann describes Educon as “a progressive education conference where the pedagogy of the conference, and the way that we think the sessions should run, are similar to what we hope to see in classrooms.”

On the 27th, Educon attendees had the opportunity to tour around SLA, observing many different classes. Later that night, Junior and Educon co-chair Assirem Hosni gave a speech that introduced a panel full of educators from across the country. This marked the official start to Educon.

On Saturday and Sunday, people attended conferences with topics ranging from racial discussions in classrooms to meditation techniques for teachers. Some of SLA’s own teachers, such as Mr. Kay, Ms, Walker-Roberts, Mr. Kamal, and Mr. Lehmann, gave presentations.

Over 400 educators attended Educon that weekend. Educon Co-chair Amal Giknis was excited to see so many people in attendance this year.

“It’s really cool to see in the middle of January when it’s really cold outside and it’s the middle of the school year and everyone’s already exhausted and everyone’s coming together because they want to keep thinking about this work in meaningful ways.”

Educon has been happening at SLA for ten years, and it is the largest fundraiser for the school. This year, over 40,000 dollars was raised for the Home and School Association. But, fundraising is not the reason Educon is important for the SLA community.

Sophomore Taj Walter volunteered at Educon both last year and this year and stated, “People who teach me and people my age are there. People who will teach my kids are there. It’s fun to be around educators who actually care about what they’re teaching and how they’re teaching.”

Mr. Lehmann also says, “Twelve years into Educon, thousands of educators have come to it and it deepens their understanding and knowledge of what modern education can be and how that manifests in the ways that we teach.”

With the move to Ben Franklin so close in the future, many SLA students are wondering what will happen to Educon. Both Ms. Giknis and Mr. Lehmann assure that Educon will continue at Ben Franklin.

“The conferences are part of people’s expectations now, it’s become a tradition in the ten years that we’ve been doing. It’ll be nice to have our own space and a bigger space and an auditorium to use as a conference space next year,” Ms. Giknis states.

Jayla Wright

Copy Editor

With social media so prevalent in our lives, it’s hard for a typical high schooler going throughout our day without it. We can’t even remember a time without Snapchat or Instagram.

In 2018, adults have spent around 10 to 11 hours a day looking at their screen. Teenagers spend around 9. However, there are some teenagers who buck the trend prefer to stay off social media.

Sophomore Jon Rodebaugh and Junior Emmet Tsai-McCarthy are two such students —  a couple of the seemingly few people completely absent from social media. Neither of them has anything against it. They simply consider social media engagement as unnecessary for their lives.

Living separately from social media can cause cultural norms to clash with social media frequenters. Everyday actions such as mindlessly scrolling through apps such as Instagram or Twitter, can have an unintended impact on the interactions happening in real life.

“Sometimes when I’m trying to have a conversation, they’re just flipping through their phones looking through social media” stated Rodebaugh. “it feels like I’m being ignored.”

Rodebaugh continued, “I feel like if you’re with a group of people you shouldn’t have your phone out unless you’re showing someone or it comes up in conversation.”

This splitting of attention between technology and our companions has gradually become the norm, but Rodebaugh sees an impact.

“I feel like our relationship building and our communication as people has been struggling because of social media,” Rodebaugh explained “Because we have social media I feel like we get the mindset that we don’t need to communicate with people.”

Tsai-McCarthy has a different idea on social media’s effect on people.,

“I don’t think it’s something that people should really worry about too much. I just don’t think it’s a huge issue,” he explained. “it’s not as big as like ‘oh it’s turning all of our next generations into mindless beings.’ I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

“People like to say it’s making us more antisocial though I’ve seen quite the opposite because of social media, they have connected more,” he explained. “And yeah, people can get antisocial and again, it just depends on the person. There also benefits to social media.”

There’s a ton of debate on whether social media is harmful or good, however, most would agree we would benefit from checking our screen time and behavior online.

As of the 2018-2019 school year, SLA has made a major shift in its freshman programming and its relationship with The Franklin Institute.

 

When SLA first opened in 2006, the museum was a major partner of the school — as indicated by the prominent sign expressing their partnership with the Franklin Institute.

 

Before the school opened, Principal Chris Lehmann worked closely with the Franklin’s staff and board to be able to live out the vision he had for the school.

 

“In the planning year of the school, my office was actually in the Franklin Institute,” he explained.

 

For the past ten years, Freshman attended STEM-related mini-courses at the Franklin Institute on Wednesday afternoons. The goal was for incoming students to have an experiential learning process when transitioning into a high school setting.

 

“We wanted to give the freshman hands-on learning experiences outside of the school environment, and being able to use the Franklin as our partners was a great opportunity to do so because they had so many valuable resources at their fingertips,” Counselor Zoe Siswick explained.

 

However, in the past few years, the financial situation of the museum changed. The Franklin Institute went through a new strategic plan in the year 2016 with the new CEO, Larry Dubinski, changing their focus on youth programming including where SLA fits into the plans. One result of these changes is that the Franklin decided to end the Wednesdays at the Franklin program.

 

“SLA was no longer a priority to spend the amount of money the partnership cost them,” Siswick continued.

 

There became new priorities on the part of both organizations.

 

2018 marks the first year that SLA does not continue with the mini-courses that are usually organized at the Institute. Instead, newly designed mini-courses are located in the SLA building, a setup pioneered by SLA Beeber.

 

“What this allowed us to do was take a much more active role in the programming the mini-courses for the [current] freshman class,” Lehmann stated.

 

“The feedback we are getting from the freshmen is that the excitement about them is still very high even months into the school year.”

 

“I like having it at SLA because I don’t have to go anywhere and because there are many options for mini-courses,” said Freshman Rebecca Cassel-Siskind, who is currently enrolled in the debate mini-course. Other courses include African Culture, Mental Health Issues, and Philosophy.

 

The mini-courses held at the Franklin had a mix of opinions when it came to student feedback. The end of that program gave SLA staff, including Jeremy Spry, the opportunity to get involved with the students more based on their feedback and design plans around their interests more tightly. On top of that, it is much more convenient for students to access having them take place in the same building.

 

“Some kids really loved it, others didn’t, and that is one of the issues with the amount of energy the Institute put into making them happen for so many years,” Lehmann continued. “Some pieces were successful, whereas others weren’t as successful as we liked.”

 

Some upperclassmen were clear that they consider the new mini-courses an upgrade.

 

“I didn’t like it at all, I thought that the TFI mini-courses could have been a lot more engaging and it was just something I just did for the grade, not because I was looking forward to it,” Senior Alexandria Rivera said. , “When Sophomore year hit, my classmates and I were so relieved that it was over.”

 

Using the feedback from past projects, the new mini-courses are designed so that the teachers worry less about content and more about their ability by managing the program, to help the instructors design something aligned with the SLA plan.

 

The partnership with The Franklin Institute is still continuing in other ways.  

 

Student memberships are still valid, there are opportunities for SLA to take part in the Franklin’s Award Week events, and the programming for students through STEM Scholars is still available.

Brendan Hall

Staff Writer

On November 6, 2018, the midterm elections took place. This was an opportunity to elect congressmen, senators, and governors.

Several voting aged seniors at Science Leadership Academy discussed the process of registering and whether or not they would be voting in the midterm election.

These 12th graders were eager to use their voting right for the first time.  

“I think that it’s really important that younger people vote. If more young people vote and happen to vote Democrat we can eventually get the house to be equal again,” Green elaborated on her stance on why it is important for young people to use their right of voting.

“I think after seeing the reaction of the 2016 election it made me realize that if I have opportunities and then I can make a change and I learned that my vote does matter. I wanted to partake in that,” SLA student Lauren Nicolella stated about her desire to vote.

“Also something else that helped was the fact that SLA had voting registration opportunities…I’m still glad I had it done because I think it pushed me to do it,” She later clarified.

While both Lauren Nicolella and Taylor Green voted in the midterms. There were also those who were the voting age who chose not to vote.   

“I don’t know much about it…people who know about it should [vote] there’s nothing worse than people who try to talk about stuff who don’t know what they’re saying,” Raymond Rochester stated when asked on whether or not he would vote.

Despite not registering to vote, he still encouraged that others should participate in the election declaring, “If you feel you know enough to vote, go for it. Let your voice be heard.”

Amelia Benamara

Staff Writer

At 11:55 the imaginary bell of SLA Center City rings, not once but twice in the week of November 5th, 2018. While the students cheered and left early, the teachers and staff ran around, making sure all of their narratives are present as parents swarm their doorways.

It has been said by multiple teachers that Narrative week is the most hectic time all quarter. Math teacher, Bradford Latimer, explains the chaos teachers experience in just that week.

“The timing is always hard for first quarter narratives. As teachers, we are doing interviews for incoming students, grading benchmarks, college recommendation letters due that same week, and on top of all of that, we have a hundred plus narratives to write.” Mr. Latimer reveals.

How do teachers necessarily prepare for hundreds of conferences? SLA uses a method where teachers take time to write unique thoughts, complimenting each student as well as including potential areas of improvement for that Quarter. When conferences are held, the student speaks to their parents or guardian about what each teacher included in their narratives.

What makes SLA report card conferences unique is rather than a conversation between the parents and the advisor, it is a discussion between the student and the parents where the advisor(s) takes notes on what is being said. This way, the student and their guardian have a moment of honesty in the right space.

“At first when I came here I thought it was stupid because kids are going to lie. Then I learned that being in a room with just two adults who know lots about you as a student, in a way pushes you to vent about anything necessary. Rather than easily avoiding the topic at home,” Senior Eric Valenti compliments SLA’s uniqueness.

In SLA, students meet with the advisor the week of conferences to annotate details their teachers made in the narratives worthy enough for them to mention during the conference. This makes sure they are aware and prepared for what they want to mention.

Many students are often unaware of the hard work that is put into each personalized narratives. This year, for Algebra 2 and Calculus students, Mr. Latimer has 105 narratives to write, edit, and merge the grade data for. This takes an average of 16 to 20 hours. PreCalculus teacher, Sunil Reddy, writes a total of 65 narratives in 15 minutes.

Teachers think earlier in the process as they analyze their students to keep track of their work ethic. All of that data helps make the writing process faster because it gives a more precise picture of what the student did (or could have done) to secure their grade.

Prior to the end of the quarter, the PreCalculus teacher, Mr. Reddy, keeps track of how many times students took re-quizzes, how many of those re-quizzes were successful attempts, how many times they came to Office Hours, coupled with the number of missing assignments.

Every staff member writes their narratives differently based on the student, however, the layout is pretty similar. In a narrative, there is a section for personalized comments, areas of strength, and areas of improvement. Others, like Matt Kay, an English teacher, use the copy and paste method to make the process quicker for them, but eventually end up adding some originality to them individually.

“I DEFINITELY WRITE UNIQUE NARRATIVES. Even if some things end up sounding the same, I always type from scratch without copy/pasting comments about the student,” Mr. Reddy makes sure each narrative is special to that person.

For those of you wondering, there is definitely a limited period to write narratives. The way that the calendar works and needing to grade benchmarks resulted in only having one weekend to write the narratives this year. Usually, in the past, there have been two weekends for that.

Teachers do get 4 hours of staff meeting time to write narratives, but, again, that always is the time that ends up needing to be spent grading projects or doing other work that must be done before narratives can be written.

There are also specific, but logical requirements for narratives. Mr. Latimer, who is head of the Academic Standard Committee (ASC), explains that the committee works with teachers on curriculum development to make sure they have the support they need to build their curriculum. Knowing SLA is idiosyncratic to other schools, the ASC organizes staff workshops where the requirements for narratives are explained as well as tips and tricks to make the process feasible, especially for new teachers.

How do teachers juggle grading and narratives all at the end of the quarter? Benchmarks are assigned at the end of the quarter which are also a great portion of the narratives that teachers analyze. Even with their to-do lists full, teachers try to maintain their regular schedules such as meeting with students when needed.

“Part of the reason why that week so hard is because I keep the same schedule. I don’t want my extra requirements to impact what I can do with students so I am still in math lab when I am supposed to be and I still schedule office hours on Tuesdays,” Mr. Latimer explains.

Teachers are very much aware that a good amount of students do not bother to read their narratives, which, as you would think, is a huge disappointment considering the number of hours put into the narratives.

“I have had several students tell me they don’t read all of them which is quite frustrating. But I do hope the vast majority of them read them. Especially because they are given time in an advisory to do so.” Mr. Latimer described the frustration teachers carry.

Just as there is a number of students who do not bother to read narratives, there is also a number of students who do.

“Several students thank teachers every year for crafting unique narratives,” Mr. Reddy told, “I know students know they can read my comments without feeling as though what was said was identical to comments given to them in other courses.”

Among these students, Eric Valenti is one appreciates SLA advisors for pushing them to read and heavily annotate their narratives before their conference.

“My advisor does a good job at pushing our advisory to annotate their annotation, so we’d know what we need to work on and what we need to continue to do in the future, “ Valenti states.

Despite the chaos teachers go through during report card conference week, they work endlessly to polish their work and at the same time juggle other obligations. This is one of the many skills SLA staff carry in such an establishment that runs differently from other School District schools in Philadelphia.