By Oscar Miller Program director The global pandemic was one of several seismic events that made 2020 an unprecedented year. Amid a summer of racial reckoning, a contentious presidential election and its aftermath, and the deaths of Kobe Bryant, John Lewis and Chadwick Boseman among others, COVID-19 remained the top story. The pandemic has drastically […]
By Laxmi McCulloch Germantown Friends School As of May 2, 50.1% of Pennsylvania residents had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and 32.7% were fully vaccinated. Additionally, on April 19, 16- 17year olds became eligible to get vaccinated in Pennsylvania. What does that mean for this summer? Seems as if there’s going […]
By Amani Rivers William Penn Charter School As we surpass a year since the COVID-19 pandemic struck, it is becoming increasingly common to find some sense of normalcy in everyday life. Whether it’s the Sixers opening up their arenas to fans, or ticket sales picking up for events such as the Rolling Loud music festival […]
By Kelvin Nuñez Hamilton College My feet understood the campus by late April. Or so I thought. They experienced the ups and downs and the ins and outs of the Hamilton terrain. They took me to the basketball court, then they failed me when somehow, I tripped over imaginary pebbles. I splashed through puddles and […]
By Linda Wright Moore I recently attended a virtual “town hall” meeting, where Acel was among four stellar candidates nominated for the renaming of the Andrew Jackson School in South Philadelphia. (The other three are historical figures: Fannie Jackson Coppin, William Still, and Barbara Rose Johns.) As I listened to brief presentations about each candidate […]
By Eric Wang North Penn High School If you think remote learning, fraught with communication and technical problems, is highly stressful for students, think about the challenges teachers face. It’s no walk in the park for them, either. In a changed world brought on by COVID-19, students are struggling to learn, while educators are struggling […]
By Amani Rivers William Penn Charter School Imagine one day as a rising basketball star you found out you’ve contracted COVID-19. A thousand thoughts are running through your mind all at once. But first things first. You’ve got to alert the team, school officials and classmates, and your family of your status. This, according to […]
By Sanai Browning Science Leadership Academy at Beeber March will mark the one-year anniversary of remote learning for students in Philadelphia and around the country. When schools closed their doors last spring, many people thought we wouldn’t be out for more than six months, let alone a year. If 2020 has taught us anything at […]
By Laxmi McCulloch Germantown Friends School Last fall, my family and I gave our porch a makeover. It used to be essentially a storage area, a home for broken but still usable rakes, piles of firewood, and leaf bags that never got to dry completely between rainy days. One sunny day in October, we hauled […]
By Kelvin Nuñez Hamilton College freshman Testing, 1, 2, 3. Testing, 1, 2, 3. No, I’m not dropping the mic. And no, I’m not talking about a freshman’s sweaty palms before taking a Psychology 101 test. This is an account of the anxiety and stress college students face while undergoing an endless series of tests […]
By Arlene Notoro-Morgan I recently watched an MSNBC Morning Joe program where Joe Scarborough polled panelists to name the Black leader who most influenced them. The names ranged from Motown’s Berry Gordy to the writer Toni Morrison, all worthy role models. Naturally, I thought about my own mentor, friend, and life-long human rights champion — […]
By Kelvin Nuñez Hamilton College My feet first learned the campus in late July. Despite an already long year, I still had some pep in my step. I had fulfilled my dream of enrolling as a freshman at venerable Hamilton College in New York. College was supposed to pick up my spirits. After all, it […]
By Amani Rivers William Penn High School Wake up, eat breakfast, join Zoom meetings. Eat lunch, join more Zoom meetings, sleep. Ditto the following day and the remaining days of any given week. This happens to be a typical schedule for most Philadelphian high school students who have been confined to their homes during the […]
By Maya Clever The Baldwin School “I can’t breathe.” Those were the unforgettable words uttered by Eric Garner as he took his last breath during a deadly chokehold by a New York officer in 2014. We heard them once again last summer when George Floyd fought for his life while being pinned to the ground […]
By Lyanneyaliz Hernandez Esperanza Academy On Nov. 7, as news spread of Joe Biden’s victory, people all over the country began dancing, blaring car horns, shouting and cheering, and wildly pumping fists in the air as they poured into the streets to celebrate ‘a new day in America.’ For most Hispanics, this meant one thing: […]
By Sanai Browning Science Leadership Academy Don’t think for a minute that online learning is easy. If you’ve done it before, the hurdles may not be as high to clear. But for me, like most other students in the Philadelphia School District, remote learning is quite a mountain to climb. The workload is the most […]
The workshop committee is happy to announce that Lyanneyaliz Hernandez, Eric Wang and Nahjiah Miller have been awarded $1,000 scholarships for their outstanding work during the 2020 Acel Moore High School Journalism Workshop. The award is emblematic of the values and journalistic excellence of Acel Moore, the former Inquirer reporter and columnist who founded the […]
According to SEPTA Route Statistics, 147,000 people take the Broad Street Line daily. You can find a lot of these people on their phones, listening to music, or chatting with other subway riders. These are your average, every day, Philadelphians and these are the people who will be voting to elect our next president. Traveling […]