Attention all incoming 9th graders!

Summer Institute is happening next week! We will begin at 9:00am on Monday and dismiss at noon.  For Tuesday through Friday, we will begin again at 9:00am but dismiss at 12:30pm.  We encourage you to bring your own lunch and/or snacks as lunch will not be served in the Café.

If you are volunteering as an upperclassman, please arrive by 8:45am with your labcoat or SLA t-shirt.  

Cross-Country practice will begin next Monday, August 23rd, at 4:00 in the Café. Come join us hydrated and dressed to run! All students are welcome but will be required to get a physical in order to compete.  Please contact Srta. G. with any questions.

Official Fall soccer practices start Monday August 16th at 8am.  

Meet at the school with water, running gear and soccer gear.

Practice will last 1.5-2 hours.

Contact Mr. VK @ mvank@scienceleadership.org with any questions.

The Science Leadership Academy was named America's ten most amazing schools in the September 2010 issue of the Ladies Home Journal! The SLA community is proud to be honored along such a prestigious and innovative group of schools! Be sure to read the article to find out more about some of the most interesting schools in the country! 

The Girls' Volleyball team will begin practice on Tuesday, August 24th at Greenfield Elementary School (22nd & Chestnut Streets) from 10:00 am - 3:00 pm and continue throughout the week.  Anyone interested in being part of the team MUST come to preseason practice and MUST have a completed physical.  Participants should also bring a volleyball and knee pads to practice.  If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail Mrs. Hirschfield at khirschfield@scienceleadership.org or call 917-797-9807.  

Congratulations to Science Leadership Academy's first graduating class, the Class of 2010!!!

We are all so proud of all your accomplishments, and we wish you the best of luck! Stay in touch!

Here are the photos from graduation, taken by Darryl Moran.

Mr. Lehmann has spoken the text of his speech on his blog. The ceremony will be online soon, and we will be selling copies of a DVD of graduation as well.

The School District of Philadelphia will be opening two hours late due to the Pennsylvania Primary. The SLA schedule will be as follows:

E 10:15 to 11:00

A 11:05 to 11:50

Y 11:55 to 12:40

X 12:40 to 1:25

B 1:30 to 2:15

C 2:20 to 3:05

The Rockets defeated a dominating Prep Charter yesterday in an exciting 6 inning game that ended 15-3.  Lauren Mobly held the Huskies to 5 hits with 10 strikeouts.  She dominated on offense as well, with a single, triple and out of the park homerun.  Missy Buchanico, Bria Wimberly and Emma Hersh continued the offensive slugfest as the entire team rallied around one another in an impressive show of teamwork and athletic prowess.  Jeremy Spry made a cameo appearance as first base coach and the girls were running like pros!  Come see the Rockets take on Divisional rival, Parkway West, today - May 7th at 48th and Aspen - in hopes of completing a week-long win streak!

On Thursday, April 29th, Bill Gates - Chairman of Microsoft and co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - will come to SLA to speak to students as part of the partnership between The Franklin Institute and the Science Leadership Academy. Mr. Gates is the 2010 Franklin Award winner for the Bower Award for Business Leadership. Mr. Gates is speaking at SLA as part of The Franklin Institute's long-standing program of having a Franklin Award winner speak to our students. SLA's in-house film crew - Rough Cut Productions - will be streaming Mr. Gates' talk live to schools all over the world. The students of SLA welcome Mr. Gates and are preparing for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! 

Congratulations to Science Leadership Academy senior, Alison Campbell, for being named the Office Depot Senior of the Month by the School District of Philadelphia! Alison was honored for her outstanding academic record, her history of community service, her athletic achievements and her spirit of inquiry and innovation as exemplified by her work in her engineering classes and her Senior Capstone. Congratulations to Alison!

The Board of Trustees of The Franklin Institute is offering a $5,000.00 Franklin Institute Board of Trustee (FIBOT) Scholarship, renewable once, (to total $10,000.00) for outstanding Science Leadership Academy students matriculating college and pursuing a career in Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics (STEM).

The Board of Trustees anticipates awarding multiple scholarships each year. The requirements for the scholarship are:

• Minimum 3.0 High School GPA
• SAT Score
• Two Letters of Recommendation
• Primary Letter of Recommentation from a Teacher/Senior SLA Administrator
• Secondary Letter of Recommendation from a Non-SLA individual
• Declared STEM major for application
• Personal statement addressing the question: -- "What is your career in the STEM field going to look like in the future?".

The deadline to apply is March 15, 2010.

The application is located at http://www.fi.edu/scholarship.

The Science Leadership Academy and The Franklin Institute hosted EduCon 2.2 this weekend. Over 500 educators from all over North America came to SLA to learn with us. For more information, be sure to read the Philadelphia Inquirer story about the conference! Thank you to all the teachers, students and parents who helped make the conference an incredible success!

Science Leadership Academy has been named an Apple Distinguished School for 2009-2010! SLA is one of 54 schools across the country given such a designation and one of only five in Pennsylvania. For the full note from Dr. Ackerman, sent to all School District employees, click here.

If you were scheduled for an interview for the snow weekend in December -- we have called everyone in an attempt to reschedule. If you have not yet heard from SLA, please be aware that your child has been rescheduled.

If you do not yet know when your new interview is:

If your interview was December 19th at 10:00 am, your interview is Jan. 9th at 10:00 am.
If your interview was December 19th at 2:00 pm, your interview is Jan. 9th at 2:00 pm.
If your interview was December 20th at 10:00 am, your interview is Jan. 10th at 10:00 am.
If your interview was December 20th at 2:00 pm, your interview is Jan. 10th at 2:00 pm.

We look forward to meeting everyone!

On Saturday, February 13th, 2010 and Saturday, February 27th, 2010, the Free Library of Philadelphia will offer ACT workshops to high school students applying to college. These workshops will introduce students to the ACT and its benefits in the college application process. The students will also receive ACT booklets to prepare for the test. Through generous funding by the Library Services and Technology Act, the Free Library is able to offer these workshops to the public.

SLA will be hosting make-up interviews the weekend of January 9th and 10th. We have called all the families for whom we have working numbers, but if you need more information or you need to contact us about admissions, you can call the school at 215-979-5620 or email us at admissions [at] scienceleadership.org

Attention SLA Community -- there is no school on Monday, Decemeber 21st due to inclement weather. See everyone on Tuesday!

SLA WILL NOT BE DOING INTERVIEWS THE WEEKEND DUE TO INCLEMENT WEATHER! WE WILL BE OPENING ANOTHER INTERVIEW WEEKEND IN EARLY JANUARY. STAY TUNED FOR DETAILS.

Parents, please remember that Parent-Advisor-Student conferences are Monday and Tuesday. If you have not yet scheduled a time to meet with your advisor, please call or email immediately.

Monday and Tuesday will be half-days to accommodate conferences. The schedule is as follows:

Adjusted Monday/Tuesday Schedules

8:15-9:20 A
9:25-10:30 B
10:35-11:40 Adv
11:45-12:50 X

8:15-9:20 C
9:25-10:30 D
10:35-11:40 E
11:45-12:50 Y

MESSAGE FROM THE SCHOOL DISTRICT.......(If you know someone who is scheduled to take the test tomorrow, please let them know this information.)

If the SEPTA strike is still on tomorrow, Saturday, November 7, any student that is unable to get to their assigned site because of the lack of transportation, may reschedule free of charge by calling the SAT Hotline but it must happen on Monday.

Again, on Monday, if students who were unable to take the SAT because of the strike, call the SAT hotline, they will be able to "reschedule" their test free of charge. They must call on Monday!

Here is additional information from the Collegeboard. This is what a student can do on MONDAY if the SEPTA Strike continues through tomorrow:

1. Call SAT Customer Service at 866 756-7346 starting tomorrow or Monday (we are not able to waive fees for any date changes made online).
2. Let the customer service rep. know they were unable to get to the test center specifically due to the SEPTA transit strike and that they would like to transfer their registration to a future administration.
3. Inform customer service of the preferred future SAT test date and the transfer should take place without the additional charge of $22.00.
4. If the student is scheduled to take a Language Test with Listening (only offered in November) we will take his/her information and determine how we can accommodate them.

During the SEPTA strike, we are asking students to make all reasonable attempts to attend their ILPs. For example, if a student has an ILP within walking distance of school (Franklin Institute, Mutter Museum, any of the on-campus ILPs) and the student is in school, we expect that students will go to their ILP. If students would have to take public transportation to their ILP, then we ask that students contact their ILP mentors and let them know that they will not be attending. We have contacted the ILP mentors and let them know that the SEPTA strike will make attending ILPs difficult.

Any student who cannot attend their ILP must contact their ILP mentor and let them know.

To parents and students of Science Leadership Academy,

As everyone should know by now, SEPTA is on strike. We sent home the School District policies on the strike, but we wanted to also let parents know how SLA will be handling the strike as well.

We encourage famillies to carpool and we have set up http://sla.erideshare.com to facilitate carpooling.
Steps for using erideshare.com -->
1) Register here: http://www.erideshare.com/membership.php
2) Sign in and go to http://sla.erideshare.com
3) either a) click on Post Your Carpool Offer / Request or b) View Carpools.
 The Group Password for the Science Leadership Academy group is: SLA

Responses will go to your email account, so be sure to check it for carpool options.

If students cannot find a ride in, all teachers are posting work on Moodle so that students can keep up during the strike. While nothing replaces being in class, we are making every effort to allow students to follow along from home. Teachers also encourage students to iChat or Skype into classes from home.

Thanks, and good luck during the strike!

In the event of a SEPTA strike, attached are the instructions from the School District of Philadelphia:

If there is a strike, SLA will leverage its technology infrastructure to minimize any disruption for any students who cannot make it to school.

(Adobe Acrobat or Preview is needed to view the file.)

SLA will host a Halloween Dance on Friday, October 30th! Costumes are optional, but encouraged! There will be a prize for the best costume!

Tickets are on sale -- $3 for students, $5 for guests (one guest per person.) All tickets will be $5 at the door.

    Philadelphia, PA – September 23, 2009 – To celebrate World Space Week 2009,  The Franklin Institute teams up with NASA for a week-long spectacular display of cutting-edge technologies and demonstrations that will allow visitors to see, hear, and feel the future of space and robotics!  The event kicks-off with the fifth annual Robotics Competition on Saturday, October 3 and closes with a special installment of the popular monthly series Night Skies in the Observatory on Thursday, October 8.   Throughout the week, a series of activities and speakers are planned to commemorate the 10th anniversary of World Space Week, the global space celebration which recognizes the contributions of space science and technology.

Back to School Nights are this week!

Tuesday 9/22: 10th and 11th Grade Back to School Night -- 6 pm

Thursday 9/24: 9th and 12th Grade Back to School Night -- 6 pm

9th Graders -- we will be having a "Get to Know You" pot-luck dinner in the cafe for all 9th grade families. 12th graders -- we will be discussing the college process.

We hope everyone has had a wonderful summer, and we look forward to seeing everyone on Tuesday, September 8th at 8:15 am! The School District of Philadelphia has encouraged all schools to watch President Obama's speech to school children, and therefore the updated schedule is as follows:

Incoming 9th Graders -- Don't forget -- this week is Summer Institute! Come to SLA from 9:00 am - 12:30 pm and work with teachers and students on experiential learning projects in and around school!

Congratulations to Chris Alfano, SLA's Systems Administrator / Computer Support Specialist, for winning the Michele Wilson Mentor Award. The Michele Wilson Mentor Award is awarded to a Computer Support Specialist for exemplary mentoring of younger peers. The award comes with a $500 prize, and it will be presented to him at the 7th annual Urban Technology Project Celebration on Monday, August 17th, from 4:30 - 6:30 pm at the School District Headquarters at 440 North Broad St.

SLA is very proud of Chris and all his accomplishments!

The Summer Readings for Science Leadership Academy are posted:

9th Grade Summer Reading: House of the Scorpion (please click for assignment)

10th Grade Summer Reading Choices are here.

11th Grade Biography Readings are here.

12th Grade Reading: The Element by Ken Robinson