• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

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.

  • News
  • Features
  • Sports
  • A&E
  • Op/Ed
  • Multimedia
  • About

SLA Teachers Participate in “Day Without a Woman” Protests

April 4, 2017 by lpahomov Leave a Comment

 

by Maddi Extebeste

Staff Writer

On January 21st,  2017 the “Women’s March” took place in Washington D.C. After the success of this event, the same organizers coordinated the “A Day Without a Woman” event in Philadelphia, which would take place on March 8th 2017, for the same purposes as the previous event: promoting solidarity and liberty. As Technology and Art teacher Marcie Hull said “this events represents human rights from birth, that everyone is born free.”

On the day of the event, the female teachers first met outside of school and stood in front of the main door holding a banner which manifested their support of human rights (especially women’s rights) and solidarity.Screenshot 2017-03-08 at 11.40.08 AMAfter the school day started, female teachers went to to English and Creative Writing teacher Amal Giknis’ house, to do research and talk about the points there were presenting at their meeting at City Hall in the afternoon.

Once at City Hall, they met politicians who worked there, and had meetings with the city council to ask more fundings and present the points they wanted to talk about. Each teacher went with the person who represented their neighborhood.

 

Government and administration

The event was partially in response to an expected decrease in federal education funding, which will negatively affected schools in Philadelphia, especially for the children who don’t have many economic resources

As Senior Fatu Castillo stated, “it’s something has been taken to the people who needs it the most.”

The new Secretary  of Education, Betsy DeVos, doesn’t really believe in public schools, and sees them as a waste of money. The policy is that schools should have a certain percentage of progress to keep working, and for example public schools which not meet those expectations could be shut down, or turned into a private or charter school.

Ms. Hull explained: “What if the school can’t progress much more because it has already very good results? This law would be a rule against success.”

She also explained that education could be the “easy-target” for the government because 75% of the teachers are actually women, and that America society doesn’t value women’s jobs as much as they do male’s jobs; Hull added “the government has a too patriarchal reasoning yet; the society wants to continue what Obama and others pioneered, but they don’t let it progress.”

English and Journalism teacher Larissa Pahomov explained “the biggest factor is money, but the government should provide equal funding to all the different departments like law enforcement and the streets’ departments.”

For example, teachers’ salary hasn’t increased in four years. Before these economic “cuts” in education in 2012, SLA had almost twice as many Spanish teachers and a librarian. The lack of languages teachers is one of the reasons why Rosetta Stone program was introduced.

In the summer 2012, all secretaries and counselors at SLA were fired, like 4,000 more people working for the SDP, and didn’t know if they were going to get their jobs back the next school year. 

 

Possible Consequences

These events sometimes have consequences for the people who protest. On “A Day Without An Immigrant” some demonstrators got fired., At SLA, male teachers volunteered to cover their peers’ absence. They got to the building early but t they stayed inside  when classes began. The female teachers appreciated this effort on the part of their colleagues.

“I’m lucky for being in this community and in this union which believes in women’s liberation,” said Ms. Hull.

They finally didn’t invite students to join them in their march to the City Hall because one of the purposes was to make students “have a normal day at school,” Hull said.

Moreover, the teachers who went to protest took a personal day, and as the School District of Philadelphia said, “teachers can take personal days for self expression”.

Filed Under: News, Uncategorized

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

* Copy This Password *

* Type Or Paste Password Here *

123,928 Spam Comments Blocked so far by Spam Free Wordpress

Primary Sidebar

FacebookInstagramTwitter Snapchat

Features

New Teacher Profile: Alexis Clancy

Braylon Dunlap Staff Writer As many people know, there are a few new additions to SLA’s staff this year with a brand new member being History Teacher Alexis Clancy. If you’re in her advisory or African American history class you may have already met her but there are some other interesting things about Ms. Clancy […]

New Teacher Profile: Mercedes Broughton-Garcia

By Maya Smelser Staff Writer SLA recently welcomed Spanish teacher Mercedes Broughton-Garcia, or Ms. Garcia to her students. After spending 7 years as a science teacher next door at Ben Franklin High School, she is transitioning to life at SLA. Background & Family Life “That’s a loaded question,” Ms. Garcia replied when asked where she […]

Wardrobe of SLA

By Harper Leary Staff Writer Philadelphia is a diverse city, and the student population of Science Leadership Academy reflects that fact— not just with their identities, but also with their fashion choices. If you walk down the hallways of SLA, your head will turn every which way to get a glimpse of all the different […]

How the Pandemic has Changed Live Events

By Maya Smelser & Anouk Ghosh-Poulshock Staff Writers Everyone remembers their first concert. But when the pandemic hit, many tours were canceled or rescheduled. There was a hiatus from live music as people adjusted to their new lives– so many teens missed out on their early concert experiences..  In the past few months, however, concerts […]

How Are SLA Students Are Dealing With Their Last Quarter?

Leticia Desouza Staff Writer After a long yet quick year at SLA, students from different grades have experienced many new things they weren’t able to experience during the 2020-2021 online academic year. After almost 10 months of being back in school, students have encountered difficulties and new experiences that further molded how the rest of […]

Categories

  • A&E
  • Cartoons
  • Covid
  • Faces of 440
  • Features
  • Movies
  • Movies
  • Multimedia
  • News
  • Op/Ed
  • Photos
  • Sports
  • The Rocket Record
  • Uncategorized

Recent Comments

  • martin on Song Review: “Origo”
  • Mekhi Granby on Album Review: Restoration of An American Idol
  • Meymey Seng on Album Review: Culture by Migos
  • Kelsey Brown on Album Review: Restoration of An American Idol
  • Angela Rice on SLA’s New Building Engineer, Ikea

Copyright © 2025 · Metro Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in