LOVE IN THE CLASSROOM
xpanding the horiz ns
Teacher couples share their stories
School Board votes to pursue addition
See page 4
See page 3
the Conestoga High School, Berwyn PA
Volume 69 No. 4
February 12, 2019
Spoke.news
AASU works on Black History Month video series Richard Li & Sophia Pan Staff Reporters
Claire Guo/The SPOKE
(Virtual) Pet therapy: Freshmen Michael Dobson and Aidan Curvan test out two Google Cardboards in the lobby. For her AP Research project, senior Jordan Zelikoff asked students to watch a virtual reality video of Golden Retriever puppies before answering a few SAT questions. She hopes to see how the virtual reality experience affects testing anxiety.
Looking Forward Claire Guo
Opinion Editor
In Beaumont Elementary teacher Dominic Parrotta’s second-grade class, students are visiting the Great Wall of China, the Statue of Liberty and even the moon. Virtually visiting, that is. Over the past few years, the school district has started incorporating Google Expeditions, a virtual reality (VR) program, into the classroom. Now, teachers at the elementary, middle and high school levels use it to take their students on “expeditions” to the Great Barrier Reef, Jupiter or anywhere else the Google Expeditions library has to offer. Fourth grade teacher Phil Munger has used Google Expeditions to teach his students about different ecosystems, taking them to deserts and tundras around the world, as well as
the Revolutionary War, taking them on the ride of Paul Revere. Munger said virtual reality has changed the classroom by making it “disappear.” “We’re pretty good at using tech here in T/E, but I think this is a whole kind of other level,” Munger said. “The immersion is so incredible that the kids get taken out of the classroom to other places. Like (the classroom is) no longer around. You’re somewhere else.” Google first launched Google Expeditions in May 2015 as an immersive tool for educators and has since expanded it to include over 900 “trips,” or Expeditions. A typical $10,000 kit at Best Buy includes 30 VR viewers, 30 student devices to place inside those viewers, a teacher device, a router and a charging cart. To use the VR viewer, one places it over one’s eyes and looks at the device on the other side, like wearing glasses with opaque, dynamic screens on the lenses.
At Conestoga, the new Google Expeditions program is being used in the recently developed astronomy course, which was
District incorporates virtual reality into curriculum “Most of the (astronomy) stuff ’s at night, and we don’t meet at night, so it would have been a way to kind of give us the
Claire Guo/The SPOKE
Out of this world: Two pairs of virtual reality viewers are ready to be used in an Astronomy class. Through the Google Expeditions program, students virtually visit places like the International Space Station and the moon. first offered last school year. Astronomy teacher Michael Kane helped develop the course.
nighttime experience during the day,” Kane said. For junior Spencer Milanek,
it definitely did. He recalled seeing the moon “right in front of you” when he took the very first semester of Astronomy offered last year. “You could see different aspects of the moon, like the seas and the craters,” Milanek said. “Instead of seeing it thousands of miles away, you can see it up close and personal, and you couldn’t get that just looking up at the night sky.” Kane has brought students on trips to the moon, the planets and the International Space Station. Recently, Kane asked students to make their own VR guided tours with the help of Google Expeditions’ Tour Creator, released in May 2018. Students chose archaeological sites with astronomical significance, like Stonehenge in England or Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and used 360° images to make their own guided tours. Continued on page 3
AASU students are helping to produce a video series entitled “28 Days and Beyond” for Black History Month. The series, created by Villanova University fine arts professor and filmmaker Hezekiah Lewis, documents African-American individuals who have had a profound impact on the community. He said that “28 Days and Beyond” is his way of giving back to Black History Month and the community. “‘28 Days and Beyond’ talks about our history, our heritage, our culture and the black perspective. It highlights local heroes in and around the community and gives them an opportunity to talk about what they are passionate about,” Hezekiah Lewis said. “It creates positive conversations that are very universal—people can see and find ways to have conversations with their families even if they’re not black.” Each day in February, the show features an interview with a member of the community. This year, three of these individuals are from the Tredyffrin-Easttown area. Ekiah Productions, Hezekiah Lewis’ company, then posts these interviews to its YouTube and Vimeo channels. According to his wife, guidance counselor and AASU faculty adviser Leashia Lewis, the series provides a “cyclical picture of our community” by giving perspective from a teacher, student and alumnus. When people think of Black History month, they tend to focus on big figures like Barack Obama and Rosa Parks who are “not really reachable,” Leashia Lewis said. “The idea of ‘28 Days and Beyond’ is to highlight some of our local heroes that are doing amazing things in our more immediate community.” Conestoga special education teacher Carol Gibson, junior Ari-
ana Robinson and alumnus Kevin Stroman were the three interviewed for the series from the Tredyffrin-Easttown school district. “I talked about being one of the first African-American teachers to be hired in several years,” Gibson said. “I wanted to be able to empower some of the African-American students and encourage them to take advantage of resources. The other part of it was being present or visible for white students who hadn’t seen an African-American in a professional position in several years.” Robinson focused on her experiences growing up in the Tredyffrin-Easttown community. “We talked about what it’s like to be African-American in a predominantly white school and the struggles I’ve faced throughout elementary school, middle school and high school,” Robinson said. According to Leashia Lewis, a part of the significance of “28 Days and Beyond” is that it contrasts the negative stereotypes and rhetoric perpetuated by the media that surround the black community. “This is a predominantly white district and I don’t think people know about the African-American community,” Leashia Lewis said. “I don’t know if they know a whole lot of positive things about the African-American community. I don’t know if the African-American community knows a lot of positive things about its own internal community, and so the idea is that we show that this is a vibrant community right here in T/E with working professionals and local heroes.” Leashia Lewis hopes that this year’s project is just the beginning of the influence of “28 Days and Beyond” on the Tredyffrin-Easttown community. Next year, the AASU plans on expanding its involvement or initiating its own program similar to “28 Days and Beyond”.
Courtsey Ekiah Productions
On set: Kharisma Mcllwaine and Amari Johnson host the season five episode two edition of the “28 Days and Beyond.” The video series, produced by Ekiah Productions, releases one new video every day in February.
Program of Studies debuts new courses Reese Wang
Staff Reporter
Olivia Thompson/The SPOKE
New choices: Sophomore Paige Kleppe looks through her 2019-2020 Program of Studies. This year, three new courses have been introduced: Forensic Science, Positive Psychology and Nutrition and Foods.
When students flipped through their new Program of Studies books on Jan. 29, they found three new courses: Forensic Science, Positive Psychology and Nutrition and Foods. Forensic Science, a semester-long science elective that meets six days a cycle, combines elements from biology, chemistry and physics. Students will learn topics including fingerprint analysis, DNA profiling and blood splatter analysis through labs. “It’s going to be a laboratory-based course. Students are actually going to be not sitting in their seats the entire time,” said Dr. Scott Best, who serves as the science department chair. “They’re going to actually be doing forensics and learning how to do chromatography or learning how to analyze bug development (entomology).” Forensic Science joins other popular science electives added in recent years, including Astronomy, Microbiology and Genetics. According to Assis-
tant Principal Anthony DiLella, the administration added these science electives due to growing student body interest. The growing amount of science electives allow students to take two semester science electives per year, or “combo courses,” in place of a full-year science course. “Students will be able to take combo courses in science like they do in social studies now,” DiLella explained. “Now they can take Genetics and Forensics or Astronomy and Forensics.” Meanwhile, many universities offer a course on positive psychology, a branch of psychology that studies the strengths that allow individuals and communities to thrive. The Yale University course Psychology and the Good Life has over 1,000 students per semester enrolled. Inspired by the success of positive psychology at the collegiate level, Zimmerman created the course. “I sort of thought if so many college students are taking it and finding it useful and interesting, maybe it could be useful and interesting for high school students,” Zimmerman explained. Positive Psychology is a se-
mester-long course that meets six days a cycle for juniors and seniors. The course is part research and part experimental. Students will find what techniques research said makes people happy and will experiment with applying the techniques in their lives. “Much of the assignments would be exercises. You would do things. So we study, what are the things that make people happy? What behaviors? Let’s try this and see if it makes me any happier,” Zimmerman said. Although other social studies courses such as Psychology touch upon happiness, Positive Psychology offers a more indepth look. “I think that when I grew up, things were easier to be a kid,” Zimmerman said. “This course will help students understand how to cope better with some of the challenges that come up. I think it’s the kind of information that would be useful for a lifetime.” One course that students won’t find in the Program of Studies this year is Sports Nutrition, which has been replaced by Nutrition and Foods.
“When we talked to the students, we felt that there was a need from students to have a course in family consumer sciences to talk about various things, like different dieting fads, being gluten free, what is celiac disease and that sort of thing,” DiLella said. Nutrition and Foods is a semester-long course that meets three days a cycle and is open to all grades. It will explore how to create one’s own healthy lifestyle. “The goal of the course is to have a balanced diet for your individual needs,” family consumer science teacher Michele McMonagle said. Although the Program of Studies does not contain any drastic changes, DiLella believes the changes will benefit students’ futures. “I think (the Program of Studies has) some positive changes that really reflect what’s happening here at Conestoga and really reflects what’s going on outside of Conestoga. So when students go through these courses they have a good foundation for going to college, into the workplace, or wherever they choose,” DiLella said