NEWS

going global

The Global Impacts Microschool left a lasting impact on its students and the community during first quarter.

BY COPY EDITOR CLAIRE BOMA

The Global Impacts Microschool is one of Sion’s newest experiential courses, and it combines AP English, ethics and global health credits.

The experiential curriculum engages students and gives them the agency to take control of their education by connecting students to unique community projects and trips in order to gain real-world experience.

“Being able to apply concepts in and out of the classroom allows me to better understand not only the concepts, but also the importance and value of the things that we are learning,” sophomore Ella Satterwhite said. “It also makes the class more engaging to use a variety of learning styles.”

Curriculum is based on Sion’s Portrait of a Graduate as well as United Nation Sustainable Development Goals (or SDGs). SDGs are goals the U.N. hopes to achieve in order to eradicate poverty and promote sustainability by the year 2030. Each unit in the class focuses on a different SDG.

“I looked forward to the class every morning,” junior Suzanne Sade said. “We immediately dove into our topics for the year, and while the work was hard and it required focus and effort, I enjoyed doing it.”

The first SDG covered was “quality education.” Students discussed what quality education meant and how the idea of ‘quality’ differed around the world. They also discussed how COVID-19 affected education for both students and teachers.

“I enjoyed learning about education and how it varies in different parts of the world. Viewing topics through a global scale revealed to me that much of what we consider normal is anything but in other parts of the globe,” Satterwhite said. “I was also shocked by how much work went into preparing a single engaging lesson.”

For their unit project, they taught an English lesson to eighth graders at Sion’s lower school. Students were given a topic they needed to cover but had to create their own lesson plans.

“I realized how hard teaching can be,” junior Lucy Wittek said. “Props to our amazing teachers for sure.”

In their next unit, “good health and well-being,” students discussed what it meant to be healthy and how the idea of health differed around the world. They also learned about healthcare disparities.

Microschool students became certified ambassadors for Days for Girls, an organization dedicated to providing quality health education around the world. This certification allows them to teach health classes through this organization in any country.

“I really enjoyed learning about healthcare initiatives, as well as just learning more about the inequities of healthcare, such as those surrounding periods,” Satterwhite said.

The class also partnered with Giving Hope & Help, a local nonprofit that provides sanitary products to those in need, for their October Deep Dive session. The students planned, fundraised and packaged bags with assorted period products. They also sent emails to senators about Senate Bill 1118, a bill that, if passed, would require free sanitary products in public and charter school bathrooms.

“I was on the fundraising team, and I learned that raising any significant amount of money is a lot of work,” Satterwhite said. “Between having possible partners not responding to emails and the schedule conflicts that we had to manage within our own school, it was a true test of management, coordination and professionalism to raise any money at all.”

The final units of the quarter centered around “decent work and economic growth” and “responsible consumption and production.” Students learned about climate change and discussed ethics and sustainability in livestock and agriculture and economics.

“I learned very alarming statistics about the future,” junior Ginger Griffiths said. “People need to realize what is happening around them so that we actually create change.”

The class field tripped to Urbivore, a sustainable and off-the-grid farm located within Kansas City that grows food and flowers; raises chickens, geese and pigs; filters water and runs a composting business. The farm provides food for thousands of people in the Kansas City area while promoting community and sustainability.

“I loved interacting with all of the animals, especially petting the pigs, and experiencing a new type of lifestyle that I had previously been unexposed to,” Wittek said.

The students got a tour of the farm with the owner, Brooke Salvaggio, and her son. Salvaggio explained to the students how their family adapted to a sustainable lifestyle by lowering their expectations for comfort.

“I really enjoyed visiting, as that lifestyle was incredibly fascinating to me,” Satterwhite said. “Watching the owner’s son run around the farm, eating apples he picked off of the tree made me question the things I take for granted and what luxuries in life we truly need or even want.”

The microschool will wrap up learning about SDGs by the end of first semester, and when they return from winter break they’ll each begin conducting a research project. These projects will expand upon the smaller scale lessons and trips completed in the first semester.

This all leads to a spring Deep Dive trip to Kenya, where students will perform real-life work or research in their field of study.

“I’m excited to really lean into the second semester student-led research project and engage in research that I’m very passionate about,” Wittek said.

The curriculum empowers students to seek individual passions and increase confidence in their skills and in themselves. By the end of the year the students will be well equipped to face challenges of the world in their adult lives.

“I was thrown into numerous situations and experiences I never thought I’d have the opportunity to experience, and it set me up for success in the future,” Sade said. “The class itself gave me abilities to approach new experiences and learning opportunities with an open mind and with critical thinking skills.”

PHOTOS | CLAIRE BOMA

Unrealistic depictions of high school within the media leads teenagers to feel disillusioned by their own experiences.

BY PRINT CO EDITOR-IN-CHIEF SOPHIE GROMOWSKY

When I was a little girl, Fridays at my house were designated movie nights. My sisters and I would park ourselves in front of the living room TV and debate for ages before finally selecting a movie all three of us could agree on. Over the years, our Friday nights were spent watching Troy and Gabriella singing and dancing their hearts out in “High School Musical,” Stella and her bandmates vying to win the Rising Star competition in “Lemonade Mouth” and Dylan being crowned Blossom Queen in “Geek Charming.”

While I wasn’t completely fooled into thinking that my high school experience would consist of elaborate musical numbers being performed between classes, these movies did lead me to grow up believing in their general idyllic narrative: that high school would be the most eventful, memorable and generally spectacular four years of my life.

Hollywood had me convinced that what awaited me once I got to high school was a super hot boyfriend who was a jock but also sensitive, a fairytale prom with seemingly no budget and abundant free time to pursue my hobbies and extracurricular activities with my enormous group of friends.

Then I actually got to high school, and rather than encountering these things, I felt more like Sharpay in “Stick to the Status Quo,” thinking: “This is not what I want, this is not what I planned, and I just gotta say I do not understand.”

The reality is that high school, like most other things, is simply not as glamorous as the media would lead us to believe, and these phony depictions can lead teenagers to feel disillusioned and unsatisfied with their own high school experiences.

However, just because your high school experience doesn’t resemble the ones played out in your favorite shows and movies doesn’t make it any less valid; it just makes it real and likely far more relatable to the everyday teenager than anything that they see onscreen.

Take a look at high school relationships, for example – Hollywood would have you believe that your dating life is one of, if not the most important part of your high school experience. We can all think of several iconic high school movie couples: Troy and Gabriella, Lara Jean and Peter Kavinsky, Sandy and Danny.

While producers might throw in a few obstacles for these pairings to keep the plot interesting, relationship problems in the movies are always quickly resolved with a grand romantic gesture, after which the couples return to their usual states of bliss.

In the real world, high school relationships are much less idealistic. For teenagers, it’s rare to see a relationship last longer than a couple of months. Most teens simply lack the maturity, communication skills and commitment required to make a long term relationship work.

When it comes to teen romance in the 21st century, the dating scene is made up less of relationships and more of ‘situationships’ and ‘talking phases,’ where labels and exclusivity don’t apply, and intentions are unclear.

Contrary to what popular movies and shows may lead you to believe, it’s also completely normal and acceptable not to date at all during your high school years. In fact, 64% of teens reported that they had never been in a relationship of any kind, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center.

Another area of the high school experience that is falsely represented in the media is the academic portion. In all six seasons of “Gossip Girl,” I never saw a single character study for a final or stress over an essay, and yet, when college admissions rolled around, each one was accepted to the Ivy League institution of their choice.

Even Rory Gilmore, perhaps the most studious protagonist ever to appear on teen television, seemed to have an inordinate amount of time to sit around drinking coffee at Luke’s with Dean/ Jess/Logan, and she had no issue getting into Yale.

The reality for the majority of teens, however, is that academics are the primary focus of their high school years. Between AP classes, standardized testing and college applications, significant time and effort goes into crafting the perfect academic record.

In addition to the standard seven hour school day, the average high school student also spends 2.7 hours on homework per night, according to The Washington Post, so it’s ironic that media portrayals of high school fail to acknowledge the most time consuming area of teenagers’ lives.

Speaking of time, teenagers in the media don’t seem to operate on the same 24-hour timetables that we normal humans are restricted to. I mean seriously, how was Sam able to work full shifts at the diner before her school days even began in “A Cinderella Story”?

For teens who don’t possess Hilary Duff’s time-bending powers, sports practices, music lessons, theater rehearsals and after-school jobs eat up the limited number of free hours high school students possess in a day.

Juggling jobs, extracurriculars and schoolwork leaves real-life high schoolers with limited time to dedicate to their social lives, and forces them to prioritize those commitments over spending time with friends.

While Cady, Regina, Gretchen and Karen have endless hours to wander the mall in “Mean Girls,” most of us don’t have that same luxury. Time management is one of the most necessary skills for high school students to master in preparation for their futures, but it seems that most of the characters in teen shows never have to learn this valuable skill.

Ultimately, the truth is that all high school movies and shows are fictional stories that function to entertain us, not to document teenagers’ real everyday experiences. They’re not realistic, but they’re also not supposed to be - no one wants to attend school for seven hours each day, complete an additional 2.7 hours of homework and then turn on their TV and watch the characters on screen do the exact same thing.

The next time you open Netflix to watch your favorite teen drama, remember that you’re not meant to relate to the actors and their made up storylines.

Even without a picture-perfect relationship, fairytale prom or jam-packed social calendar, you can still have a high school experience that is exciting and memorable. So turn off the TV and go make it a reality.