Blog Feed

Welcome back to school, SLA students! On the first two days of school we will follow the below special schedules. We will start following our usual schedule (as printed on student schedules) each day beginning on Thursday, 9/2. Have a great year, SLA community!

TUESDAY, 8/31:

08:15am - 10:05am Advisory

10:10am - 10:55am E1 Band

11:00am - 11:45am Y2 Band

11:50am - 12:35pm X2 Band

12:40pm - 01:25pm A2 Band

01:30pm - 02:15pm B2 Band

02:20pm - 03:05pm C2 Band

WEDNESDAY, 9/1:

08:15am - 09:10am D2 Band

09:15am - 10:10am E2 Band

10:15am - 11:10am A1 Band

11:15am - 12:10pm B1 Band

12:15pm - 12:45pm Lunch (10/11th grades) / Advisory (9/12th grades)

12:50pm - 01:20pm Advisory (10/11th grades) / Lunch (9/12th grades)

Please see below for updates to our pre-season tryout/practice schedule. If a sport is not listed, it’s tryout info has not changed.. As a reminder, students may not participate without a fully completed PIAA physical. Feel free to reach out to Ms. Siswick (zsiswick@scienceleadership.org) with any questions.

Current COVID-related guidance requires all athletes and coaches to be masked indoors. Vaccinated individuals may be unmasked outdoors while unvaccinated individuals must be masked at all times.

Girls Soccer

Tuesday, August 17th 2pm-SLA/Franklin gym (note location change)

Wednesday, August 18th 4pm-SLA/Franklin gym (note location change)

Thursday, August 19th 4pm-Marconi Playground OR SLA gym, weather dependent

Boys Soccer (JV&Varsity)

Tuesday, August 17th 12:15pm-SLA/Franklin gym (note time and location change)

Wednesday, August 18th 12:15-SLA/Franklin gym (note time and location change)

Thursday, August 19th-time and location TBD, weather dependent

Girls Volleyball (JV&Varsity)

Tuesday, August 23rd 2-4pm-SLA/Franklin gym

Wednesday, August 24th 2-4pm-SLA/Franklin gym

Thursday, August 25th 2-4pm-SLA/Franklin gym

Co-Ed Cross Country

Tuesday, August 23rd 3:30pm-meet outside auditorium

Wednesday, August 24th 3:30pm-meet outside auditorium

Thursday, August 25th 3:30pm-meet outside auditorium

Girls and Boys Ultimate

Tuesday, August 17th - meet in SLA Commons at 12:15 (weather permitting)

Wednesday, August 18th - meet in SLA Commons at 12:15 (weather permitting)

Thursday, August 19th - meet in SLA Commons at 12:15 (weather permitting)

Hello SLA Families,

We hope you are enjoying the last few weeks of summer! See below for the first week of tryout/pre-season information for our fall sports. All student-athletes MUST have a fully completed PIAA physical (click on document linked below) dated June 1, 2021 or later in order to participate in any workout. If families encounter difficulties obtaining a physical from their physician’s office, most urgent care clinics will complete them for $40-50.

Please do not hesitate to reach out to any of the coaches and/or our Athletic Director, Ms. Siswick, with any questions or concerns.

Girls Soccer

Coach: Zoe Siswick (zsiswick@scienceleadership.org)

Pre-Season/Tryout Information: Tuesday, August 17th 2pm Wednesday, August 18th and Thursday, August 19th, 4pm Marconi Playground, Broad & Oregon Ave.

Boys Soccer

Coach: Jimmy O’Karma (jgokarmajr@philasd.org)

Monday August 16th, 2021 10am- 11am @ Sacks Playground (4th and Washington Avenue)- This is document collection day. Please bring your completed physical! If you want to stay and play pickup (physical needed), we will be there for the hour.

Tuesday August 17th- Friday August 20th @ Sacks Playground (4th and Washington) 10am-12pm Preseason Practice

Football

Coach: Lorell McCook (lamccook@philasd.org)

Monday, August 9th: Free physicals at school (use Ben Franklin/Broad St. entrance) at 3:30pm Must have parent signatures on physical form Tuesday, August 10th-Friday, August 13th-Heat acclimatization/tryouts) 3:30 at 18th & Wallace

Cross Country Coach: Jaclyn Rickus (jrickus@philasd.org)

Friday, August 20th-time TBD

Girls Volleyball

Coach: Karina Hirschfield (khirschfield@scienceleadership.org)

Tryouts Wednesday, August 18th & Thursday August 19th, SLA gym, time TBD

Ultimate Frisbee

Girls Coach: John Henkel (jhenkel@scienceleadership.org)

Boys Coach: Chris Lehmann (clehmann@scienceleadership.org)

Students who are interested in playing ultimate should wear comfortable clothing and cleats (if you have them) to Summer Institute. There will be introductory sessions each day after Summer Institute

Students Run Philly Style

Coach: Jeremy Spry (jspry@scienceleadership.org)

Students who are interested in SRPS will get more information at Summer Institute and/or once the school year begins

I felt very good; and, we knew that we helped our environment., One of the park engineers thanked us and said that it was nice of us to be cleaning the park. I feel like by cleaning up, we made our environment safer, healthier and cleaner, we made essential workers happy; and, hopefully, we inspired others to clean up themselves. For example, my six year old, younger brother also helped out. He went around the park with a stick, grabbing the trash, and putting it into the trash bag. Holding a public park cleanup showed him and all those in our neighborhood that keeping the environment clean is important. Involving young people, like my brother, in these activities, teaches the next generation to care about our planet. Perhaps, in the future,he can do a similar clean up at his school, helping my mission and making my idea grow.

Many organizations are working to help our city and country improve the environment, increase air quality, and to make their parks more beautiful. People are also trying to use solar energy, reducing their dependence on power plants that spread greenhouse gases into our environment. Another way to make a difference in the fight for our planet is by protesting, many people gather and protest climate change. There are many changes that will reduce our impact on our planet and help fix the problems we have already caused. There are also websites that people can see to learn more about this topic, and I think that many of these websites are kid friendly.targeting the future generations is important, because when we talk about climate, it’s their future that we are looking forward to. There’s also websites that do stuff like I did in a big group, clean parks, plant trees, and other cool and safe activities to help the environment. I learned so much more about helping our environment and enjoyed helping make a difference in my community with my family. Maybe you and some friends would like to help out the community in a similar way? Go ahead,and grab that litter!

I’m not sure if these have to be on Slate or not to count, so I’m putting them here in case they do. Song 1: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YYuldcuhY7AEnSjNz9cY-FMEbk8Kc-l1/view?usp=sharing Song 2: https://drive.google.com/file/d/12r71WsbHzExZC7l7pLynmni8IQcNwRjw/view?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_fql1CQncVvnM4_Wp09FyXL1A4ZzEcoMy9tL_0Nq7iQ/edit?usp=sharing

Section 1: Introduction I made a couple songs. Making music is something I’ve been curious about wanted to do for a while, and this was a good opportunity.

Section 2: Process I used Chrome music labs and Reaper to create my music. I didn’t know what my capstone was going to be until after winter break. I researched all of this by myself. Section 3: Reflection If I were to redo this, I wouldn’t have put it off until February.

In my previous post I talked about the history of wax cylinder records and why their historical value is worth preserving and I discussed the people who are interested in preserving them and why. In my Agent of Change I am aiming to continue to spread awareness of cylinder records and promote the preservation of them by continuing campaigning and promoting archives and agencies who preserve records, like the UCSB Cylinder Archive. I have also created an Instagram account that is going to post daily to raise further awareness for cylinders. The account will post daily and share a fun fact about cylinder records and share a daily cylinder recording from the UCSB archives, which will both promote awareness and bring even more attention to the efforts being made at UCSB. My further research and starting the cylinder account has shown me that people are interested in cylinders quite a bit, seeing as the account so far has 19 followers and the 2 posts I have done so far are getting likes and engagement. I am hopeful that people will continue to follow the account and some more efforts can be made in the future to continue spreading awareness. I also hope that I can make an effort to reach out to UCSB eventually and help to organize some sort of campaign to get museums to start preserving cylinders as they do other forms of art. My goal beyond just raising awareness is mainly to get people/organizations who have the funds and resources to preserve and digitize cylinders to consider starting collections similar to the UCSB archives. UCSB is the only archive for cylinders of it’s kind, so I hope museums in the future consider starting collections of cylinders. I have also found out that the Library of Congress has also made efforts to preserve cylinders, but I am unsure if these kinds of efforts are still being made today. The Federal Cylinder Project also has worked to preserve Native American cylinder projects as well, which is a great effort to preserve a culture that not many people have considered. I feel that so far my Agent of Change has gone well, but I think that I should’ve reached out to UCSB sooner than I planned to, because I didn’t expect the Instagram account to gain immediate attention, although I am glad that it has actually started to make progress so early on. I am happy overall with this project as a whole, since I have made a lot of progress with gaining followers for the account. I also feel happy that I’ve found a way to use one of my personal interests with music to create something to inspire change and help preserve an important part of history that many don’t care about. I also feel like with this project I am going to start my own personal efforts to preserve cylinders and start a collection. I hope that one day I can start an archive to store and transcribe home recordings of wax cylinders. I just need to continue to run the account and hopefully save my money to purchase more cylinders and technology to play them and preserve the audio.

My Senior Capstone is a website that gives future SLA students the blueprint for an SLA Music Studio. The site includes a homemade blueprint, products with descriptions, and the science behind sound. The link below will take you there. I hope you enjoy it!

https://sites.google.com/scienceleadership.org/anslamusicstudio/home?authuser=1 https://sites.google.com/scienceleadership.org/anslamusicstudio/references?authuser=1

In my previous post I talked about why I switched my topic from elephant poaching to teenage sleep. In short I switched because the problem of teenagers not getting enough sleep is something that I myself struggle with and people I know struggle with it. When researching sleep deprivation i found that around 87% of teenagers struggle with it so chances are you or someone you know is affected by it Right now I am telling alot of my friends and family about the topic and informing them of all the signs that can show they are experiencing sleep deprevention. I’m also talking to people about what the effects of sleep deprivation are so they know to get enough sleep and to share the same information with others. Stanford medicine has an article about teen sleep. It talks about one solution to sleep prevention, moving back school start times. This is only a partial solution though because more people need to know that it is a big problem and that they should be getting more sleep.For my agent of change I wanted to make a presentation and share it with my advisory. I decided to do this because it is an easy way to get the word out to a bunch of teenagers that most likely struggle with the issue at hand. Unfortunately due to reasons on my end, I was unable to present my presentation to my advisory. I was able to share my presentation to my class though. I think that overall I was effective at making change. My classmates all know about the issue so they can take action if they so please. I know that I have made change in myself as well. I have started to get more and more sleep so if i didn’t make a change for everyone else, i at least did for myself.Overall this project was extremely fun. This is probably the case because of how it is all about something that I am passionate about. With my first topic, animal poaching I really wasnt super passionate about and it didn’t feel quite right doing it for my project. I think one of the things I could have done better would have been actually presenting my presentation to my advisory. I don’t think that there is much left for me to do to make change besides telling more people. Others including you who are reading this can tell others about the problem and you yourself can make change.

In my last slate post I wrote a piece called “Born Different” in which I talked about me being different from everyone else in my family and what that felt like for me. I also talked about my brother and how he helped me understand that I belonged even though I was different from everyone else in my family. He helped me see that being different wasn’t so bad and that being brown in a white family wasn’t bad either. In my ongoing research something that I have done was make a blog post. In the beginning I was going to do an instagram but then I decided to do a blog post. I did this because I didn’t have too much time but If I can I would do an instagram post to have my research be more out there in the world. It would also show people what the police force has become well before even now but even more so now that they have become a militarized type of police force. For this to change I believe that either defunding or just not putting as much money into the police force would help them not be so militarized. Yes I get that they have to protect people but they shouldn’t be so over militarized to the point where they have pretty much huge armored vehicles, grenade launcher type things like the thing they shoot tear gas out of. Overall I just think they need to not get as much funding so they don’t become over militarized. I also think that the police put people of color in prison even when they do nothing wrong so that’s why I think that the justice system also needs to be fixed. Lastly I think that the amount of time for police that are trained should be increased and police should be monitored by a single overlooking type of government. Especially now with everything that’s been going on and that’s getting released right now out in the world.

When pursuing my agent of change I was thinking about what I could really reflect on and the most recent thing at the time was my brother’s arrest and what he had noticed with the police. In the end I decided to choose the topic of militarized police and well police in general. I did this because when my brother was arrested the police didn’t let him get a phone call. They took him to a prison facility where he was later integrated by the FBI and asked certain questions all because he was trying to help people who were being tear gassed at a protest. He was trying to help people by providing water with certain stuff inside to help with the eyes but when he was arrested he was accused of mixing chemicals to create something worse. When he was taken they also took his friend and put zip ties on their wrists but to the point where my brother’s friends hands turned purple. They asked to loosen them but they didn’t know how to. Later they were put into the system and transferred to several different prisons for hours until he and my brother were split up and put into different jail cells. My brother was telling me how he got put into a cell with a black man who had his back broken and how the police didn’t even bother helping him so the man was cold throughout the night since it was cold that night. In the end I was reflecting on everything me and my brother talked about. I decided to do the topic of militarized police which also went deeper into the funding of police. Funding into prison training and the actual police force. I was effective at making a change by telling my brother’s story to my friends helping them see how the police treat prisoners. Citizens. Black people.

Doing this project I felt pretty good about what I decided to do for my Y&TW project. I also felt pretty strongly for what I was looking for when I was researching. But overall I felt pretty good about my project and felt like I did a lot. Something that I learned about myself is that after doing this project I see more now that the police in the US are pretty much a second type of military. In a way, the way it’s going or was going showed that the police was becoming more of a military type of force than a police force. Something I learned from my brother was that after he was arrested he learned something from the guy in his cell who told him “don’t worry you’ll be okay youll have have a lot better chance getting out of here than I will”. After that he was starting to calm down and got out the next day but he reflected on that moment because he was white and the guy in the cell was black with a broken back and my brother wasn’t in any pain but was just afraid because of his interrogation with the FBI. Something that I feel like I could have done better with is going into more detail about my Y & TW project or maybe by doing an instagram post instead of a Blog Post would have been better. I think something that people need to do is know more about the police being militarized and spreading it but a lot of people don’t think of that when they hear about police when really the police are militarized in the US. So I think writing more or spreading more about the police being militarized could help people understand more about it.

My issue is Privacy Violations, by social media sites. In my recent slate post. I wrote about how much information Google and Facebook collect on their users and what they do with it. After some research, Some things that have been done to fix the issue I chose is congress passing an Internet privacy bill in 2019. In my opinion, this is a great way to make change. The only way these technology companies will change their ways is if we go the legal route. However, the bill hasn’t been enforced much, which is a huge problem. There is no point in passing a bill if it does nothing. India on the other hand, passed an internet privacy order this year, and they are really enforcing it. The Indian government is currently investigating WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, for breaching Indian anti-trust laws.

My goal was to inform people on what happens with their information when they use Social Media sites. I researched what type of data social medias collect, and how to protect your privacy from them. Then I wrote my own article detailing my research. I decided to write an article to inform people because I had no idea how much Social Media companies knew about me until I watched a documentary on it. After that, I still had to do research of my own. So I wanted to make it easier for people to learn about this topic. My article isn’t too long, it’s a short read that will make sure you get the gist of the problem and how to protect your privacy. After writing the article I contacted Mr.Jeremy Spry and explained my topic to him and the article I wrote. He was able to publish my article in the most recent advisory memo. If you haven’t seen me I’m right under book club.

In my experience doing this project, it was pretty eye opening how much data Technology Companiescollect. Something I think I could’ve done better is to have covered more social media in my article because I wrote about Facebook, Snapchat, and Google. I think including Twitter and Reddit could’ve made my project better. Link to annotated bibliography

My project is about how technology can violate your privacy. I was inspired to do this project by a documentary called “The Social Dilemma” it informed me on how much personal information websites and social media like Google, Facebook, and Instagram really collect. This inspired me to do my own research and now I want to share it with the rest of my class because I think it is important for people to know what they sign up for when they accept the terms of service.

This issue personally affects me and anyone else that uses social media. I as well as most people value privacy and don’t want a huge tech company to know absolutely everything about us. But don’t take just my word for it. I have multiple credible sources that also say social media invades your privacy and you don’t even know it. My first source is an article written by Aliza Vigderman from security.org website made by people with law enforcement and security backgrounds. In this article Aliza grades popular websites and social media on how well your privacy is protected using it. Google receives an F, they store your address, cell phone contacts, and use algorithms to determine which ads would be most likely to make you buy something.

After reading this I wanted to know what other companies kept a lot of data on us. It turns out all social media do. Especially Facebook, they record every post you like, page you visit, and every comment you write. Facebook then uses an algorithm to build an image of you. They want to know all of these things about you to target ads to you. Which might not be so bad if Facebook wasn’t so irresponsible with all of their data. Facebook has been constantly accused of selling your data to third parties. In fact, Reporter Aleksandr Kogan from Cambridge university was able to easily obtain the information of 270,000 Facebook users. Facebook even uses its users’ data as a bargaining chip. Companies favored by Facebook were given access to user data to better target ads and make more money. Companies Facebook does not like on the other hand we denied user data.

In my opinion, neither should be able to just look at our information especially since People have consented to give Facebook information not a bunch of other companies that make Facebook money. Facebook gets away with this because most people don’t actually read their terms in service. During my research, I took the time to read what’s in it, and you would be surprised what you consent to when you use Facebook, It is a lot of information. They do give you the option to limit the type of data they collect, but it’s buried in the setting. So you won’t be able to find it unless you know what you’re looking for.

In 2019 congress passed about a bill that would establish privacy requirements for social media sites Called the online privacy act. Though it was passed I don’t see any difference that has been made by the bill. I think if this bill is enforced better. This problem could become smaller.

Link to annotated bibliography and Sources: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yUTY_RQk9wWFZdp49LA-jQ88-rL2msiC/view?usp=sharing

In my recent Slate Post I talked about Smartphone Addiction in simple words is the overuse of smartphones. This can also include social media. Overuse of these things can have a negative effect. Some effects are depression, suicide, interference with how productive you are, and interference with your sleep schedule. You can even have a “tech” neck. Over time, the position of leaning over your phone can cause your neck to be stiff and stay slanted.

An organization called the Center for Internet and Technology Addiction. Dr. Greenfield, who founded the organization, treats people with internet and technology addiction. He is also known internationally. The organization has therapy and workshops to help the addiction. At Camp Poconos Trail they have a tech overuse program. In this video, they explain how this program works, and the effects it has. They show kids what activities they can do that don’t involve going on their phones. I think camp is a great way to learn how to be off your phone, learn what to do in the meantime, and meet new people.

For my Agent of Change I decided to create a phone use challenge. Basically you would try to spend less hours on your phone for a whole week. You would set a goal based on the average amount of hours you spent the week before. You would do the things that you probably have been procrastinating to do. I chose to do a challenge because I was not exactly sure how I would make a change. I knew that I wanted people to at least try spending less hours on their phone, get them to realize the negative effects and that is how I came up with the idea of a challenge. A challenge is something people can decide to try and is not exactly forced and the challenge itself is adaptable to their average hours goal. I created a google form as feedback to see if this challenge was helpful or not but unfortunately I did not get any responses. My effectiveness is unsure due to the fact that I don’t know if people actually tried the challenge.

I enjoyed doing this project because it is an eye opening experience. I feel like this project sounds a bit scary because you are going to have to put yourself out there and it is not something that just you and your teacher will see but people out in the world will also see. Something I could have done better was organizing, preparing, and presenting my Agent of Change earlier. I think if I had not presented two weeks before grades are put in, I guess people would have tried the challenge and filled out the google form. I think what is left for me to do is also try the Phone Use Challenge and see for myself if it helps, see what changes I should make the challenge.

In my last slate post I discussed what makes a game good. I went into great detail with my annotated bibliography and I was really proud of my research, but there was so much about video games that I wanted to talk about so it was a no brainer to make a video series with another topic added. The new topic I added was the history of video game. It was really fun to research, here is on of the resources I used most. The videos them selves were super fun to make especially the second part, which I am far more proud of. Though my original ideas were far more ambitious, I even planned for a third part. I do think I could have made the far better its just videos like these take longer than I expected. I am still proud of the end result. I really hope you enjoy the videos cause I worked really hard on them, and I know my topic isn’t as pressing as everyone else but I still think it is worth talking about. There is still so much I would love to talk about and still so many things you can do to help with this topic, such as just not buying bad video games, that’s really the best anyone could do. As I said before I hope you enjoy the videos and goodbye for now!

Due to the SDP half-day, Friday, 5/28 will run under the below abbreviated schedule.

09:00am - 09:55am B2 Band

10:00am - 10:55am X2 Band

11:00am - 11:55am E2 Band

I dove deep into the causes of the African American achievement gap in my first slate post. In that slate post, I explain how I found 4 major causes for this achievement gap. Those causes were home life, school, mental health, and the history of African Americans. I spoke of how African American children may have a stressful home life caused by financial issues and not enough guidance and love from their parents. I spoke on how ignored mental health is among the black community. Parents often dismiss their child or even ignore their own mental issues causing them to cause their own children harm. Treatments regarding the mentally ill seem to also be less effective on black people. It has to do with the difference in how African Americans are raised and their environment. In order to have effective treatment, people who work with the mentally ill would have to consider cultural and environmental differences. The history of African Americans has not been sweet. African Americans have experienced segregation in the past and African Americans are still going through it but in a different way. Predominantly black schools are severely underfunded and students are expected to thrive in a place where their building is falling apart.

Like I said in my last slate post, digging to find information on this topic is almost impossible. Although I was not able to find people who were working on a way to reverse this gap, I was able to find at most 3 websites going deeper into how to reverse this gap. I think that the website I’m going to reference is very informative and should be brought to the attention of more people. It talks about how teachers should be trained to deal with different cultural backgrounds. Teachers do not understand the role they play in a child’s life sometimes and this is one of those times. The website explains how teachers don’t understand the reason behind a child’s behavior and that can lead to them lowering their expectations of the child. How could this affect African American students? Well, as I explained in my slate post, when the teacher and parent give up, what do you think the child is going to do? Give up.

For my agent of change, I decided that I wanted to do a mini course with my classmate, Kyla. My initial thought was to educate teachers within SLA about how to interact with students from different cultural backgrounds so that they don’t go down a slippery slope. But then I thought a better method would be to target the youth. The youth are the people who will enter society not too long from now and they’re more likely to want to get up and do something about it. So what better way to spread my message than designing a mini course for freshmen? This was a big thing to do honestly. To design a whole lesson plan from scratch on our own? We had to go from student to teacher and it wasn’t easy. Me and Kyla had to figure out how long we wanted our mini course to be, what we would discuss, how much time we would each get, how our topics connected, and so much more. We also had to email Mr. Spry in order to approve our mini course. This project was a challenge, but fun. I also found amazing videos on things like generational trauma that almost made me tear up because of how real it was. Of course, we didn’t get a chance to put the mini course in action due to it being almost the end of the year but I do look forward to presenting it to the freshmen next year.

Our first email to Mr. Spry

Our second email to Mr. Spry

This project was really cool and a great way to push yourself to learn something new or to learn more about something. I think this project was a good challenge and it feels really good to be able to feel like you can change something in the world. I learned about the unknown stress many African Americans go through. I even found myself realizing that I went through a lot of the stuff mentioned and yet I didn’t see how bad it actually was until now. So many things mentioned regarding the lack of achievement in the African American community, I’ve seen in real life. I learned that African Americans go through a lot as a whole and we ourselves fail to realize how bad our situation is.

If I were to do this project again, I would start the slate post early on and as I go. I feel like the project didn’t need to be fully done in order to like half the slate post. Regarding my agent of change, I would’ve started planning the lesson on the lesson plan doc first instead of writing in my book. The doc gave a lot of guidance and made everything 100x easier.

In order to see real change regarding this topic, we need awareness. That’s why I chose my agent of change in the first place. I want to see more people talking about this. I want to see people upset about this. I want schools and families to take a step back and reevaluate how they treat the youth when this is brought to their attention. What has to happen from here is quite obvious. We need more people to know about this, spread the word, find solutions to these issues, and then execute those solutions.

In my first slate post, I explained how cultural appropriation is harmful to the Black community. Black culture benefits every other community, except for its own. It was important that I gave 6 examples as to why cultural appropriation is an issue in the world that needs to be solved, while also using my 6 sources as main ideas. The amount of various ways I persuade the readers to help seek the principle and bigger picture, of a struggle out of many, that Black/ African Americans face everyday are strong.

In view of the fact that Black cultural appropriation is my topic, to be an agent of change, I have teamed up with my classmate Tybria Bowser. Her You & The World project is about the African American Achievement gap, which connects to Black cultural appropriation, in many ways. We thought it would be a brilliant idea to combine our ideas, and work to produce a future mini course for class of 2025, and if successful, so on. It would be great to teach the youngest classmen on how to not harm their peers, especially at such an open and diverse school like SLA.

*Tybria and I emailed Jeremy Spry, proposing our act of change. We gave background information about our projects, and basically just went into depth about our plan. He agreed for us to move forward with our idea :). *

After hearing that there was a chance of our plan coming to life, Tybria and I created this mini course template, to help prepare and brainstorm criteria for the future freshman. We each went along and created material for each of our topics, and found a way to connect one anothers. The mini course will be 8 days long. We have an intro for the first day, and then cultural appropriation is spent using the next 3 days, and then I transition my last day into Tybria’s first day. She also has 3 days, and then our final class, the 8th day, we’ll let the students take control, and use that as a way to reflect on the course as a whole. I did some research mainly for my section of the course, and found a video to explain “What is Black culture?”. I thought it would be a great introduction to our first class.

The process in making and planning a mini course during a chaotic benchmark time like this was very difficult, but very interesting and enthusiastic. Tybria and I were able to finish our mini course template, and emailed it to Ms.Giknis and Jeremy Spry.

Unfortunately, Tybria and I weren’t able to hear back in time to see if our mini course was approved or not, but we feel very pleased with our journey, and feel supported through every step of the way. Before I close out my slate post, I just wanted to mention Tybria and I’s projects connect to each other, because of the double standards that Black people face when doing anything in society. It just made sense to collaborate on a project like this, because we can both use each other as a strength in educating future SLA students, about the Black community better. Like I said before, we aren’t aware if our mini course will be approved yet, but a way you can be involved, is by showing us your unconditional support, and being here with us on this journey.

My original slate post, I spoke about how suicide is one of the leading causes of death and how mental health is one of the biggest factors of it. I included not only a chart of the leading causes of death in each age group but also provides a video narrates the experience and recovery of a suicide victim. I go into depth about different types of therapy that may help those who are seeking help while also providing a link to other ways to help prevent suicide.

Since that post, I have continued to try to raise awareness for suicide by focusing on one of the leading factors, mental health. In my engineering class, I decided to create an infographic that states “Do’s and Don’ts of Comforting Someone” and it came out nicely! I researched on this website and also asked a few friends on this topic. I also have been spending time researching different hotlines to call when you are in need and made a poster providing all these hotlines. These hotlines were made to help people in need and those who do not have someone to go to so by spreading these hotlines, it will encourage people to use them. If people actually decide to call or text these hotlines, it can decrease the number of people committing and that is exactly what I hope for.

On the Left, the “Do’s and Don’ts of comforting someone”infographic and on the right is the different hotlines poster.

For my Agent of Change project, I decided to start a selfcare club. Originally I wanted to keep my ideas virtual but after getting suggestions from teachers, I finally decided to start a club at SLA with my sister. We needed to create a proposal to send to Mr Lehmann and Mr Spry but we also wanted to create an interest form for the SLA community to fill out. Fortunately, our proposal got approved so the You & Me Selfcare Club will be opening the school year of 2021-2022!! The process was very nerve wracking and confusing since I am still new to SLA’s community. I think starting this club will hopefully make the SLA community closer and provide a safe space for students to have someone to talk to. The pandemic has sort of ruined our freshman experience so starting next year, I hope this club can allow all of us to get to know more about each other.

Above is the club proposal that I sent to Mr Lehmann and Mr Spry (click on it to view the whole presentation).

I genuinely hope this club will help the SLA community in a positive way. I am excited and quite nervous about starting this club next year but I am happily doing it to provide others a trustworthy space. I learned many things about mental health and will still continue to do research on it. I also found out the SLA community and staff are very supportive and kind-hearted, so to that, I will be very excited to meet everyone! Suicide is still a huge problem but we are talking it a step at a time. I think we should all remember to check up on our friends and also do mental check in for ourselves too. We should continue to care for each other and recognize our emotions, thoughts, problems and more. We should try to understand each other and keep our community healthy while also having fun. I will continue to plan the self care club to make it as enjoyable and informational as possible for next year so can’t wait to make a positive influence at SLA.

Annotated Bibliography

For my capstone I did a continuation of my You & The World Project, based on the rate of hate crimes and abuse LGBTQ people face. Although this was not the original plan, it was the best option because over my years at SLA I have collected more knowledge about my topic, which has allowed me to grow.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1931nCIfO-9Y1_aYpDmyqHPqUl0UPcK_jrYQsycKX7t0/edit

https://docs.google.com/document/d/17XY-QOzNdrfXqyyaOEnRIK-z3smosTAk6e63Sds4nTI/edit?usp=sharing

For my Capstone, I wanted to focus on refining my artwork and the techniques I learned during the school year. I learned animation via Windows Movie Maker, I practiced lip movement and blinking animation. I would start by drawing the beginning frame and the ending frame and then move onto the frames in between. For talking animation, I would have to count out the amount of syllables that is used in a phrase to make sure it matches. One of the techniques that I use is gray scaling in my art to make up and fill in the blanks for when I don’t have any materials for colorings.

The slate post was about plastic pollution. In the community and throughout the rest of the world people are using a large amount of plastic. It is very bad for the environment and the future. In the world right now there are lots of things being done to help stop plastic pollution. A few examples are people trying to minimize the amount of single-use plastic or plastic, in general, being used daily. Scientists are finding organisms that can consume plastic. The last example can be using more glass objects. Some organizations that are trying to help currently are

Keep Philadelphia beautiful

Love your park

Trash hero world

Changing how much plastic pollution there is out there is by working together. There is so much plastic out in the park and in the ocean that we all need to reduce the amount of plastic being produced. The reliance on plastic in this society is huge. Big cooperation needs to stop with the plastic bottles thing instead use glass bottles. Glass bottles are a lot more sustainable for the environment. Glass gets recycled from 50% to 80% which is a lot compared to plastic.

When I had to decide how to do the agent of action, I had no idea what I was going to do. I asked myself “how am I going to change the plastic pollution”. Being realistic now, one person can’t fix the globe of plastic pollution. I designed a presentation which will inform people about plastic pollution. It’s now up to everyone else who wants to help fight plastic pollution or make it worse. I also made a social media account to post daily starting May 28.

Throughout creating the project it was stressful. There are many reasons why it was so stressful. A few are that I had a lot of homework and projects to be working on. Balancing that all out was stressful and stayed up late working on these projects. The second reason is motivation. I lack the motivation to do the actual writing part but I do love researching. I think researching is the easiest because you can learn so much. The last one is that I wanted time to do things other than just homework and projects. They are both time-consuming and to be honest, I want to also have time to learn how to cook or just go outside and be a teenager.

While making this project I would be wondering how effective this would be. The answer to that question is, I don’t know. To be honest, I don’t know, I don’t know because I have to rely on other people. Sometimes things are successful other times they are not. I hope this project is one of the successful ones but if it’s not I can try again until I get it right.

With the whole project, I was under a lot of pressure to get it done. It was very interesting to learn about plastic pollution and the side effects. Although the side effect is really bad it makes someone realize that people are so reliant on plastic. Plastic is everywhere, even in the least expected places. In my opinion, people should know the bad effect of plastic pollution but also how reliant they are on it. It’s sad to see the constant reliance on plastic.

What I learned about myself is that I just need motivation and to be strict with my work. I say this because I just lack motivation a lot. Sometimes it hits in waves. When I push through I feel accomplished even if I only did one assignment. I think it’s something to be proud of because that means I have one less assignment to do and I can move on. What I learned from others is that they will cheer for you and believe in you. Sometimes it’s just that, that a person needs.

When I reflect on this Agent of change project, I feel like my time management could have been better. I lack the motivation of doing work in the last quarter. I would also spend more time doing the project part. I would like to add more detail to the project. Now that’s left is to spread the information. Spreading the information is going to be the hardest part. Not only do I not have any control but people need to work together in this. No one can solve global issues alone, we have to work together.

Bibliography

Presentation