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Why I Enjoyed Online School

January 13, 2022 by lpahomov Leave a Comment

Leo Braveman

Staff Writer

Sophomore Biran Mahmoud working from his computer

Back last year we had to have almost the whole year be online . I found my rithim and actually enjoyed online school. Usually when online school is brought up I hear about strong negative opinions – “it was so hard to learn, “I just coulden’t focus” or “it was just so boring” but I had a different experience.

To start I got to wake up at basically 9 am, and I didin’t have to commute to shcool. Classes were sometimes tough, and I did have technology rage to be fair, but when I had a problem my teacher would be understanding and I could normally find a solution. Secondly, breaks were amazing!! Whenever I had a long lunch break it was so nice to be at my house for it. I could take a nap, do school work, eat lunch, go on my phone and even go to the park with my friend. Finally, my favorite part of online school was being at home, although there were cons like not being as social, being at my own desk with more space felt like the nicest thing ever.

Because of this when I heard septa was planning a strike I was ecstatic. This meant all the old things for me, with more benchmark work time added, and I even made goals like going to the park everyday and going to the gym everyday. Although this didin’t happen I think school should think about the benefits of working from home. Maybe more study periods could be added, where kids could get work done and bounce from class to class. Or maybe kids could get out early on days where they had an advisory, if they were going home early for a purpose.

Juniors Process Recent Thefts at SLA

September 28, 2016 by lpahomov Leave a Comment

By Kia Dasilva

Co-Editor in Chief

On Monday, September 19th, the junior class of SLA met in the drama studio during advisory for an emergency grade-wide meeting about recent thefts in school.

The theft in question, which was recorded on school cameras, happened the previous Friday. A phone and some money were taken out of backpacks that had been left outside the fitness studio during Physical Education class.

Principals Aaron Gerwer and Chris Lehmann met with the student on Friday, and negotiated an outcome of restorative justice: instead of being removed from the school community through suspension or expulsion, the student would publicly apologize to the entire junior class in a grade-group meeting.

Many students did not know the reason for the meeting until they arrived. After Lehmann and Gerwer briefly explained the situation, reactions were varied.

“There was lots of yelling going on. It was very uncomfortable,” said Junior Kaamil Jones after the event.

“There were people who weren’t taking it seriously, and it’s a very serious issue, and then there were also people taking it super seriously. Some people took it too far.”

Several students expressed outraged and verbally objected, including one student who challenged the meeting, viewed by some as “public shaming.”

“Personally, I thought it was wrong. It went against my morals and what I believed in,” said Zahirah Poree.

“I felt like if no one was going to stand up and say anything, then I should”

When asked why she thought it was wrong, she cited a combination of anger towards unfair punishment (although the student had admitted to the theft, she believed the student was innocent), and the way the meeting was conducted.

“I just think that that’s not cool, to publicly humiliate someone like that in front of their peers, their friends, everybody… Then people are going to look at you like ‘What’s wrong with you? Why did you do that?’. It could’ve been handled in a different way.”

Other juniors tried to understand both sides.

“I think they were trying to enforce that we’re a community, and that if you do something wrong to one person, you hurt everyone,” said Junior TK Saccoh.

“I don’t think their intentions were bad, I think that it all became misconstrued.”

In an interview with SLAMedia, Principal Lehmann explained the rationale behind the meeting.

“More and more research shows what we at SLA have long felt – suspensions and expulsions are blunt instrument tools that are minimally effective when it comes to school discipline. Restorative justice, while unquestionably hard, has proven to have a far more positive outcome for both the student and the school community. The public nature of restorative justice creates a need for hard conversations that can be hard in the moment, but SLA has never been a community that has shied away from hard conversations.”

This event comes after a series of thefts last school year, including the theft of Mr. Kay’s iPad and Chromebook from his classroom, and items from many seniors in Mr. Block’s English class during their Art in the Open performances.

A common thread through all these thefts is that property was left unattended. In the case of Ms. Martin’s gym class, she warned students that leaving their backpacks outside the room does not ensure their safety.

Officer Byrd, sitting by the backpacks outside a gym class as a result of the recent theft, gave some words of advice to students:

“I recommend locking your items in a locker that has a lock on it. Stop leaving personal items out in the open. Keep money, laptops, and cellphones close to your person, meaning your body.”

New Policy Results In Sub-Par Subs

December 18, 2012 by lpahomov 1 Comment

By Tytianna Broadwater & Annisa Ahmed

Staff Writers

This year, the substitute teachers are different.

In the past, when teachers reported absent, district schools could call ahead to the School District of Philadelphia and could request a substitute teacher by name.

With all of the budget cuts to the School District, many teachers were let go in June of 2012. So, at the start of this year, the District has given laid off teachers the option to substitute teach where they would like. Schools can no longer make specific requests. As a result, popular substitutes like Mr. Salters, known around the school as “Pop-pop,” and Mr. Petrovsky, have rarely been at SLA this year.

“They won’t let our old, familiar subs be a part of the community anymore,” said Secretary Diane LoGiudice. “In other words, if I have a job that has been sitting out for two days, even though the subs that I know that are familiar with our school, they don’t have the option of to pick up that job and come in.”

Instead, a rotating cast of substitutes have replaced them — and many of them have a hard time getting used to SLA’s relaxed style.

“Some of these subs are old school,” Ms. Diane said. “It’s like there is no talking in the classroom, no you-can-text-your-teacher, no you-can-leave-to-go-to-the-bathroom. They start calling the office, and I have to tell them, ‘Yeah, it’s okay.’”

Senior Ryan Harris has witnessed this strict behavior first hand. Harris spends one of his bands acting as the Student Assistant Teacher for one of English-History Teacher Joshua Block’s classes.

One December 13th, Mr. Block was out with pneumonia, and Harris walked in, expecting the period to be just like any other, minus the head of classroom.

The substitute, however, wrote rules that went against the open nature of SLA, such as no hats or hoodies, no chewing gum, and no more than four people to a table. He also complained about the temperature and fiddled with the thermometer, even though there was a sign saying not to.

When the students had already signed in, the substitute then stopped class, saying that the number of people in the class did not match up with what was written on the sheet.

“He would name a student that was not [in the classroom] and then he would look at me, basically telling me to find that student,” noted Harris. “I didn’t want to cause any trouble, so I did.”

Later on, the substitute fell asleep during class. The situation was difficult for Harris to watch.

“A lot of kids that I sit near were asking me, ‘Why can’t you be our teacher?,” said Harris. “And, the whole time I didn’t know what to do. I told them that they just had to listen to what sub has to say and come to me for any academic problems.”

290bd99f-ba84-4248-bd3f-a1594a30caec — Photo Credit: Wynn Geary

English Teacher Larissa Pahomov has the opposite complaint, where a substitute let several students out of her classroom to “work in the hallway.”

She jokingly suggested strategy to combat the issue of students leaving a class in bulk in the presence of a sub: “I think I will have a big sign on my desk that says ‘Only let one student out of the room at one time.’”

Junior Isabela Supovitz-Aznar, for one, missed seeing Mr. Salters, and had a bad experience with a substitute teacher who was covering for her Advisory. When she was the last person to come ask for her transpass, “He said, ‘Oh darn, I thought I had a free trans pass for the week. It sucks I don’t get to keep it.’”

As of now, there is no hope that the District will allow SLA to pick substitutes again, but the school will solve any problems as they happen.

“If there is a problem when the sub is there,” Ms. Diane said. “Stop by the office and I will handle it.”

Contact(s): tbroadwater@scienceleadership.org – aahmed2@scienceleadership.org.

Combatting the filth at SLA

October 23, 2012 by lpahomov Leave a Comment

Teachers and Students agree: SLA had been getting dirtier.

Many people at SLA have been overheard talking about some of the “trouble spots” in the school. Common spots to find litter are the pool and the ballrooms, where students leave packaging and food from lunch.

Things get more extreme in places like back stairwell, where people have left litter, extra chairs, and other messes. Even in the bathrooms, weaves, unsanitary napkins, and other trash have been found on the floor and in the sinks.

The littering has resulted in some gross consequences. Senior Winston Wright has a tale about bugs.

“During the beginning of preseason for soccer we wanted to use first floor bathroom in the morning but couldn’t because there was like 4 or 5 cockroaches running around,” he said.

As popular as SLA is, there are constantly visitors viewing our school and speaking with students. Staff is concerned about how the school looks to outsiders.

“As somebody who has to give tours all the time, it’s embarrassing when the school’s not at its best,” Said ILP Coordinator Jeremy Spry.

“The truth is that the majority of the school is clean most of the time there is just some trouble spots–everybody finds it gross but no one tries to change the culture, we are living in our own filth.” Said English teacher, Mrs. Pahomov.

In response to this problem, Health and Fitness Teacher Mrs. Martin thought of an idea to keep the school in tact and cleaner: have the students take care of the space in which they must work every day.

SLA’s new Space Adoption program officially started on the first day of school, where advisories picked…

Advisories must now clean up that space and make a sign posted there, encouraging others to keep it nice.

“You are not the new janitors for that space,” Ms. Pahomov said. “The idea is that you help beautify it, and convince others to keep it nice. Plus you have to remember that every space in the school belongs to an advisory — if you mess with it, you’re messing with them.”

One of the biggest problems at SLA is with trash and leftover mess from lunch. It’s not really noticeable to students since it’s such a normality to them now. The cleaning ladies are then left to clean up the student messes. Their job is to clean the school in general, not to clean after the disrespectful students leaving their trash behind.

SLA students seem to have some mixed feelings towards the project.

Senior Alex Johnson said,” Somewhat at first I believe it will help, but well see how it ends up as the months go on.”

“I think this is just a step towards becoming the best school we can be,” Mrs. Martin said. “When you have limited resources, your people are the best resource.”

Written by Isabela Supovitz-Aznar & Jamie Murphy

Laptop Quarantine Spreads to SLA Teachers

January 22, 2012 by lpahomov Leave a Comment

The screen on an internet browser notifying that the computer has been quarantined.

By Jenn Wright

Staff Writer

Everybody who has been quarantined is frustrated about the situation.

“The way it impacted the classroom,” Ms. Laufenberg said, “was that this is the main machine I use to run my classes and for 5 days school days I was shut off from presenting information to kids and effectively doing my job.”

English Teacher Larissa Pahomov’s computer was also booted from the network, due to another widget called Octoshape, which she guesses a website installed on her laptop without her knowing it.

The first time her laptop was quarantined, Ms. Hull was able to get her machine back online the same day; but when she restarted her computer a week later, she was re-quarantined.

Ms. Hull believes it it a piece of malware that kept reinstalling itself after attempts to trash and remove it. Uncertainty surrounds as to how Ms. Pahomov eventually regained access to the network from School District of Philadelphia IT personnel because this piece of malware did not successfully get uninstalled by Ms. Hull.

She’s living with a loaner computer until the situation is resolved.

The misconception about torrent files being for only knowingly downloading or sharing for illegal purposes keeps some students from using them and getting quarantined.

Art and Technology Coordinator Marcie Hull said of the situation,”What happens is people aren’t educated enough, they don’t know about it and these things happen by surprise because the way that information is traded they don’t realize what’s copy written and what isn’t.”

Others downloading freeware, or free applications from the net, have gotten banned unknowingly. Most small companies attempting to distribute their software in a legal fashion use a form of BitTorrent to get it to as many people as possible.

For students though, the procedure after getting pulled from the network for using a BitTorrent client contains a few annoying steps, particularly for a student from SLA requires internet access at most times of the day. A letter gets sent home for a parent to sign informing them that the computer cannot have access to SLA’s wifi connections or through ethernet.

Juniors Zach Castro and Matthew Ginnetti were among the students in Ms. Laufenberg’s U.S. History class who were quarantined.

Castro said, “It stops me from getting anything done, I can’t do any research.”

“If I didn’t have an iPad I wouldn’t be able to do any of my work,” Ginnetti added.

The student must wait 5 days after turning in the paper to regain access. A few students even have been quarantined for weeks at a time, though SLA sent the correct information in promptly.

The detection system itself is an application put on the network at SDP that automatically detects and boots machine’s using any type of peer-to-peer sharing.

Frustration within SLA has been growing, wanting to know which applications and sites will activate the quarantine. The newness of the program to the District contributes to this lack of information.

As Ms. Hull explained, keeping the network open and fast moving is what concerns the IT people at SDP. For example, blocking Youtube because of the bandwidth of the videos is a much larger issue to them than blocking it because it is distracting to academics.

In the meantime, members of the SLA community with quarantined laptops are hoping to be back on the web soon.