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.

Uncategorized

Trapped: SLA students forced to eat in the Cafe

by Leave a Comment

By: Sara Nesbitt

Staff Writer 

On Tuesday, Feb. 26th, the students of SLA were forced to do something very different.

Usually, during X and Y band lunch periods, students are allowed to lunch on the second and third floors, most popular spaces being the second floor ballroom and “pool” area.

But on Monday afternoon, Principal Lehmann put an announcement in the advisory memo that all students would be restricted to the Cafe for lunch on Tuesday,

The reason? The students had littered too much around the school the previous day.

This punishment had been threatened by the school before, but this was the first time…

So on Tuesday, 75-100 students were packed together in the same constricted area, compared to a typical day.

What were the students’ thoughts?

“It sucks,” said Junior Matthew Marshall. “We have been able to eat wherever we want, for three years and now we are being restricted to one space with everyone else.”

Most students interviewed agreed with him. The students who normally use the cafe were annoyed that it was crowded, and the people who never sit there were annoyed they were forced to relocate.

“It’s stupid, chaotic, and it’s not going to make a difference,” said Sophomore Aaron Tang.

Sophomore Nikki Adeli also stated, “Sitting here isn’t that bad, but it’s nice to have the option for freedom.”

Most students blamed the freshman for leaving trash around the school. The freshman–just didn’t blame anyone.

Knowing the punishment was only for one day, the students weren’t too upset.

At the end of the school day on Tuesday, Mr. Lehmann made an announcement that the punishment was over, as long as we kept the school clean.

“I’m frustrated that they had to be punished for not cleaning up, but I’m glad the students responded well.” he said.

…Now Write a Feature Article, An Interview with Ms. Rami

by Leave a Comment

[SLA]ing by earth streamJacob Lotkowski

Staff Writer

What are teens really thinking about? This is the question that English teacher Meenoo Rami (@meenoorami) set out to answer. The juniors in earth and water streams created their very own magazines with original writing and published them on Issuu.com.

JACOB LOTKOWSKI: How did you come up with this idea?
MEENOO RAMI: I was brainstorming writing ideas with another teacher over the summer, and the idea appealed to me because it’s a form that everyone is familiar with, but it’s not something that most people have done or produced.

As Ms. Rami explains, very few students are asked to do feature writing. She said that she wanted the magazine to be be a complete body of work that her students created from cover to cover. The idea that it would be a teen focused magazine was also a must for her. She wanted her students to have a chance to talk about what they like and what they’re passionate about.

JL: Did you have any apprehension once you started thinking about the project?
MR: I doubted that it would even ever come to be. Trying to get 33 students pulling in the same direction, trying to figure out the quality of the writing, acceptable topics, the layout, how would it all come together, where would the art go, what would it look like, what would it feel like?

Ms. Rami goes on to explain that she’s glad we did it once because now she knows what to expect and what to improve for next year. She says it was a great learning experience for her and her classes.

JL: Do you have anymore to say about what the hardest part was?
MR: I think finding a name that everyone was happy with was really hard. I didn’t anticipate how hard that would be.

JL: Has any other educator done this before that you based this project off of?
MR: Ya know, I’m sure there are, but when I did my own search and reached out to my network of teachers I didn’t really find any. If there are any, I haven’t come across them yet. I would love to find other examples of this type of work from other classrooms.

JL: What did you want the outcome to be?
MR: I wanted my students to experience the writing process from the beginning to the end. What it takes to write a good feature piece, that would be spec targeted to a teen audience, how to incorporate good research, possible quotes from experts, but to still maintain a casual tone to the writing.

Ms. Rami wanted her students to strike a balance between solid content and tone which she thought was crucial to the message of the magazine.

JL: How has the response been, through Tweeting out the link during EduCon?
MR: Oh my gosh, amazing. During EduCon Alicia did an impromptu presentation to thirtysome educators who were all very impressed. The Twitter response has been incredible. Hopefully it will go on The New York Times education blog, The Learning Network, so I think we should get a lot of eyes on it.

Earth stream’s magazine published on Issuu.com
Water stream’s magazine published on Issuu.com


Harlem Shake comes to SLA

by Leave a Comment

By Isabela Supovitz-Aznar & Jamie Murphy
Video By Isabela Supovitz-Aznar

Staff Writers


In case you didn’t know, the video of the moment is called the “Harlem Shake”.

It consists of one person in a calm environment dancing in a repetitive and funny way. After the “drop” in the song, the calm environment in these videos becomes crazy with people often dressed up in costumes, but mainly dancing as crazy as possible.

With all the technology at SLA, it was only a matter of time before the “shake” came to us.

The idea to create a school-based video actually came from SLAMedia. On Friday, Feb. 15th, Juniors Jacob Lotkowski and Isabela Aznar were talking about the possibility of doing a school-wide “Harlem Shake”  when Journalism Teacher Ms. Pahomov mentioned that there was a fire drill on that day.

They went running to the Principal Lehmann’s office and asked if the school could do the “shake” during the drill, scheduled for last period. Lehmann enthusiastically agreed to the idea, and news spread quickly throughout the halls.

Senior Sophia Henninger, who is often seen dancing around the hallways of SLA, was chosen by Principal Lehmann to be the lead person in the video.

The event was chaotic. When the fire drill happened at 2:50 PM, students who evacuated on the south side of the school piled in to be filmed for the video, although unfortunately not everyone could fit in the frame.

Though the final product is not quite professional, SLA now has its very own, and very original Harlem Shake! Check it out!

Cyclohexene causes Classroom Disruption

by Leave a Comment

By Jenn Wright

Staff Writer

Science Lab in room 304
Science Lab in room 304

The third floor was evacuated yesterday, February 20th, due to the intense chemical smell seeping out of room 304, Science Teacher Matt Vankouwenberg’s classroom.

The evacuation began around 10:20 at the end of E band; teachers yelling for students on the floor to go to the Café.

The chemical named Cyclohexene, is a colorless, but very pungent liquid. It was being used in an experiment about whether polar and non-polar substances were miscible or soluble in Senior Advanced Chemistry.

The spread of the odor is attributed to the windows being closed before the class started after Mr. VK had opened them in preparation.

Classes on other floors resumed, but third floor teachers held their classes in other places–the Café, the Library and free classrooms on the 5th floor.

Science Teacher Tim Best taught his 10th grade Bio-Chem class in the Library. He said the projector didn’t have a dongle and then it overheated, unaccustomed to being used for a class period at a time. Teaching out of the normal classroom posed problems associated with technology.

Junior Niyala Brownlee was in Ms. Rami’s English Class during E band and said, “It was very faint, but when we walked in the hallway you could really smell it.”

Erring on the side of caution, the evacuation stayed in effect for the remainder of the school day. Mr. VK said, “If we had spilled 350,000 times as much [cyclohexene], we would have still been within OSHA regulated limits to stay in the room for 8 hours.”

Assuming none of the smell escaped the room and all of it turned into a gas, none as a liquid, there would have been about just under one part per million in the room, knowing it’s safe to be a room with 300 parts per million in an 8 hour time period. (source)

That being said, some complained of headaches because the funk was particularly sharp in the halls.

To remedy the smell, dirt from a flower pot was used to soak up liquid from the lab bench and then discarded safely. Coffee was used on the benches to help the lingering smell in room 304, today.

Classes returned to their normal locations today, and the smell seems to have dissipated.