Lit by Design presents
The New Design Times December Issue / Vol. 1.1
The Lit Interview: Principal Dr. Scott Conti LEXY YANOS: What does the future hold for New Design? The future of New Design… wow [gobsmacked noise]. I’m hoping that all the hard work we’re doing now will help New Design become more noticed as a great school for kids, and those noticings will provide things like… more students will wanna go to school here. We’ll attract more resources. We’ll attract high quality teachers. So I’m hoping we get some recognition, and then we’ll become one of those little gems in the city and people will talk about us.
Principal Dr. Scott Conti’s game face!
INSIDE STORIES! Hot Lunch Spots: “Gems of Chinatown” p. 2 Top Holiday Flicks, p. 3 Fall Sports Review, p. 4
True Confessions! “I storm eat!” “Shout outs to Edwin & Mike, omg!” “Open mic at lunch is hot!” “School is mad stressful 💯”
LY: What was the scariest moment for you in all your years of running New Design? Scariest moment…. I got caught on the street breaking up a fight that ended up with 10, 15 kids involved (only 1 was from NDHS). And one of the security agents got punched in the face. I remember at that moment feeling like, “Wow. I’m kind of in the wrong place at the wrong time. I also got a death threat once, left on my phone by someone I didn’t know, it was scary.” LY: What is the point of DFL? Oh, well thank you. Uhh [clears throat]... New Design’s always had a focus on social emotional growth. We used to have an advisory program that taught social emotional learning [SEL] skills. But we realized it’s actually hard teaching SEL, just like it’s hard to teach math! So we created the Design For Life program to replace our old advisory programs and then to help kids grow socially and emotionally. It’s actually a course at Stanford University, where they take design principles and apply it for how to live a happy life. And there’s a book called Design for Life, if you kiddies wanna read it. LY: Do you have any specific plans to stop people from coming to class super late from lunch? I mean, we cut lunch by 5 minutes and I think people are struggling to get back on time. Especially because McDonalds is super crowded and also people just wanna relax. We are having more staff at the front greeting people, to process them and why they’re late. We’re hoping those conversations would help, so you’ll start seeing those people. (Continued on back page)