Philadelphia High Schools Compete In The Aspen Challenge
Give U.s.a. Our Crowns
High schoolers from around the city answered the call for solutions to Philly'south bug. One team takes their project—to halt the schools to prison house pipeline—to Aspen
April. 13, 2018
[Ed note: The Citizen is hosting its inaugural Ideas Nosotros Should Steal Festival on November 30th, at Drexel Academy's Mandell Theater. Hear the Bartram High School crew tell their story. See here for tickets and info.]
"We don't want to be self or anything," Dayjane Rhone, a x th grader at Mastery Charter Schoolhouse, Simon Gratz Campus says, trying to cover a coy grin. "Merely I think we got this in the bag."
Rhone, alongside her team member, were just a couple of the near 170 high schoolhouse students packed in the Mitchell Auditorium at Drexel Academy on Wednesday pulsating with the kind of energy only a group of hyper-confident, overly-nervous xvi-yr-olds could muster. That and the steady crush of Rockstar by Mail Malone and 21 Savage playing in the background, set the scene for the final showcase of the Aspen Claiming: Philadelphia.
When it was all over, 17 teams had made their pitch to be the metropolis's peak trouble-solvers and one accomplished group took domicile the crown—literally.
In partnership with the Bezos Family Foundation and the Aspen Institute, the Aspen Challenge provides the platform and resources for high schoolhouse students to tackle the biggest issues facing society today—a task that, for the average developed, might sound grueling and most impossible. But for the 17 loftier schools represented, it was an opportunity to test their own mental chapters, learn how to piece of work in a team, upwardly their leadership skills, and develop some powerful solutions along the mode.
Over the past eight weeks, students worked hard brainstorming, developing, and somewhen implementing a solution to i of the v challenges pitched to them dorsum in February, ranging from climate change to the school-to-prison pipeline. On Wednesday, all of their hard work culminated on stage in front of a panel of seven prominent judges including Saxbys founder and CEO Nick Bayer; president and CEO of the Fund for the School District of Philadelphia Donna Frisby-Greenwood; One thousand. Dark Shyamalan Foundation executive director Danielle Wolfe; and SeventySix Capital managing partner Wayne Kimmel.
To kick off the day full of presentations, speakers, and sing along Rihanna breaks, Greg Corbin, spoken word poet, speaker and educator, shared a piece of wisdom to motivate the high schoolhouse oversupply: "You lot are the believers; you see the solutions when everyone else sees the problem."
Merely from watching the brusk v-minute presentations, information technology was clear that many groups came to win and the eight weeks of meetings, bickering, and work paid off. Lakenau High School, for case, took the phase kickoff with their projection "Carbon Busters," a program incorporating LED lights into their school in order to reduce the energy consumption while encouraging the community as a whole to reduce its carbon footprint. Over the course of merely a couple months, the team at Lakenau reduced CO2 emissions in their schoolhouse by thirty percent.
"In the beginning I wasn't confident, and I thought 'Why are we doing this?'," Dana Shaw says of Lakenau High School. "Only to see our results and meet how we reduced our footprint, it felt good that we could make a change."
Other teams showed off their accomplishments via music, detailed graphs and charts, or actual products. Slam Dunk Junk, a program created past One Bright Ray Community High School, used basketball themed trash cans to encourage garbage disposal and spark the chat around climate change.
"We decided we go big or we go home," says Jasaan Gilt, a participant on the winning Bartram squad. "And nosotros didn't want to become dwelling house, so we chose something we thought no one else would do."
At the terminate of the day every schoolhouse brought their best, but only one walked away with the crown, which they fittingly were already wearing when they got on stage to nowadays.
Give United states Our Crowns is a plan designed by the viii-student team from John Bartram High School with the goal to educate the southwest Philadelphia community most entry points to the school-to-prison house pipeline and its impact by creating a thousand-origami crane project and displaying them across the community.
"We decided we go big or we go abode," says Jasaan Golden, a participant on the Bartram team. "And we didn't want to go home, so we chose something we idea no 1 else would exercise."
The team took to the stage in matching orange prison jumpsuits, golden sparkling crowns, and a presence that demanded the attention of the audience. Coronation over incarceration was the tagline for the team working to raise awareness and promote restorative justice over incarceration. Forty percent of all U.S. children expelled from schools each twelvemonth are black and lxx pct of students involved in "in-school" arrests or referred to law enforcement are black or Latino, according to a fact canvas from the Give Us Our Crowns website.
The original challenge given by Jane Aureate, founder and executive manager of Mural Arts Philadelphia, asked students to use fine art to raise awareness about the school-to-prison house pipeline in their communities and promote restorative justice and didactics over incarceration.
Now the team from John Bartram Loftier Schoolhouse will head to the Aspen Ideas Festival in Aspen, Colorado this June, where they will spend a week attending seminars, participating in activities, meeting entrepreneurs and leaders from across the country, and sharing their projection with three other teams from Aspen Challenge in Dallas.
"Now we're performing in front of everybody, in forepart of people from all over, in front of corporations and businessmen and businesswomen," says Jasaan. "And origami cranes was a get-go, but that's not the only thing we want to do. We have more plans for the schools and local businesses to go anybody else involved."
As the team gets closer to the June festival date, they'll exist focusing on getting prepared and will receive aid from the Aspen Challenge team twice before they make their mode to Colorado. Merely besides practicing their presentation, rehearsing lines, and perfecting their stage presence the team has one thing to say to those they'll see at the Aspen Ideas Festival: "Requite u.s. our crowns."
Here are the other teams that came out as winners on competition day:
1st identify, team from John Bartram High School – Team proper noun: "Give U.s. Our Crowns"
second place, team from George Washington High School – Team name: "PhilaMundo"
3rd place, squad from Northeast High School – Team proper name: "Alpas"
Other honors and awards:
- String Theory Charter School won for Best Exhibit
- Lankenau High School won The Touch on Honor
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/ideas-we-should-steal-festival-2018-give-us-our-crowns/
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