The Lowell Newsmagazine October 2017

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October 2017

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“At some point the walls might close in on us.”

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“If this is the only good new feature, then it makes me wonder honestly why we had to switch.”

CIARA KOSAI

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“I had convinced myself that San Francisco was this happy little bubble of acceptance and positivity where I would never experience discrimination based on my sexuality.”

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“College applications are already very stressful, as is Lowell, but having somewho can help guide toward you toward success helps manage the stress.”

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At Lowell, 17 out of 72 AP Physics C students are girls.

HIDDEN GEMS OF LOWELL HIGH: Senior printmaker Naomi Hawksley

NAOMI HAWKSLEY

COVER: Cover illustration by Naomi Hawksley

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A dream deferred

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ANITA LIU

CHECK OUT: The Lowell’s National Scholastic Press Association 2017 Award Finalists 1. MULTIMEDIA NEWS: Hundreds of students stage walkout and march to City Hall to protest Trump by Ella Murdock Gardner and Zahra Rothschild

2. MULTIMEDIA FEATURE: Beyond the myth: AsianAmericans challenging stereotypes of the model minority by Sofia Woo 3. MULTIMEDIA SPORTS: Vars boys’ basketball team soars past Washington Eagles in BOTB by Emily Sobelman 4. EDITORIAL CARTOON: How to get that internship

by Hannah Cosselmon

Varsity girls volleyball conquers the Eagles 3–0

5. NEWS STORY OF THE YEAR: Inside Inclusion by Katherine Nguyen CHRISTINA JOHNSON

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DACA banner wording creates controversy

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Lowell The

Editors-in-Chief

ella murdock gardner zahra rothschild

News Editors

zahra rothschild tammie tam

Sports Editors

yolanda feng giping huang

Opinion Editor Multimedia & Photo Editors

ella murdock gardner tobi kawanami ciara kosai

Art Manager Illustrators

hannah cosselmon hannah cosselmon naomi hawksley valentin nguyen

Reporters

allison dummel kate green michelle kim olivia moss emily sobelman olivia sohn susan wong sofia woo jocelyn xie raine yingru hu

Photographers

jennifer cheung shyla duong christina johnson ethan lei anita liu esther posillico

Business Managers

sherissa go aaron liang jacquline ruan

Head of Research Web Designer

maximilian tiao

Adviser

eric gustafson

Awards

alyssa young

2014 nspa online pacemaker 2012 nspa print pacemaker 2011 nspa all-american

2011 nspa online pacemaker 2009 nspa first class honors 2007 nspa all-american

2007 nspa web pacemaker 2007 cspa gold crown

EDITORIAL Lowell’s emergency procedures are lacking: We need a new plan

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rom Hurricane Harvey to Hurricane Maria, from earthquakes in Mexico to fires in Napa and Sonoma county, natural disasters have been sweeping the world. In these times of trouble, it is especially important to look at our own safety procedures to make sure we’re prepared for potential emergencies.

On Jan. 10, 19 of 80 Lowell registries failed the annual lockdown drill. Out of the 19 registries that failed, 10 were supervised by substitute teachers, according to assistant principal Holly Giles.

Lowell did not do an adequate job of educating substitutes about basic emergency procedures, according to substitute teacher Gina Colligan. “You come in as a substitute and you have to figure out everything about the school immediately—you are given almost no information,” Colligan said. “You are given an attendance list and, if you’re lucky, you will be given a lesson plan.” This method of informally educating substitutes on the emergency procedures proved to be ineffective, as demonstrated by the lockdown drill failure.

In response to questions from The Lowell regarding the procedures, assistant principal Orlando Beltran implemented a new standardized system for educating substitutes.

However, there’s more to be done.

At Lowell, there are several issues regarding the safety procedures, including problems with the evacuation routes, the public address system and the manner in which drills are practiced.

The school does not provide students with accurate simulations of emergency situations by only exercising certain drills during registry. Lockdown, earthquake and evacuation drills are only practiced during registry because this is the only way the school can make sure that most students are on campus, according to Giles.

However, as registry is 15 minutes out of a seven-hour school day, it comprises only three percent of the normal school schedule, making it very unlikely that an actual

emergency would happen during that time.

“Most of the drills are convenient to happen during reg, but realistically, an actual emergency is not necessarily going to happen during registry,” assistant principal Margaret Peterson said.

Furthermore, because students are only able to participate in drill simulations during this time of the day, their knowledge of where to go and what to do is limited to what they’ve experienced in that classroom.

Therefore, students are not familiar with the evacuation routes from their other various classrooms, as well as the procedures for different situations. “All teachers teaching all classes should be required for every single class to spend five minutes to diagram the evacuation route to show where the students are supposed to go,” biology teacher Mark Wenning said. “Because if we only do it in registry, then students are only going to know where to go from their reg room.”

Another issue concerns Lowell’s two communication systems: the public address system and the telephones. These systems are simultaneously utilized for announcements in case either one malfunctions. In Wenning’s case, the telephone system is important for conveying information. “The PA system in this room is not so good, so it’s good the announcements also come over the phone system,” Wenning said.

The lines of the PA system were cut during the earthquake retrofitting construction and were not repaired, although the contractors knew about the issue. On Sept. 26, Beltran sent a survey to teachers about the PA system’s defectiveness and 11 teachers reported issues. The telephones were fixed on Sept. 29 but the PA system wires remain unrepaired.

Giles hopes to retrofit the PA system by replacing the current system with a live video-streaming service in an effort to prevent any future cases of miscommunication during an actual emergency. Alongside Beltran, she intends to provide more visual messages than auditory. Giles is currently researching

See EDITORIAL on pg. 21

The Lowell is published by the journalism classes of Lowell High School w All contents copyright Lowell High School journalism classes w All rights reserved w The Lowell strives to inform the public and to use its opinion sections as open forums for debate w All unsigned editorials are opinions of the staff w The Lowell welcomes comments on school-related issues from students, faculty and community members w Send letters to the editors to thelowellnews@ gmail.com w Names will be withheld upon request w We reserve the right to edit letters before publication w The Lowell is a student-run publication distributed to thousands of readers including students, parents, teachers and alumni w All advertisement profits fund our newsmagazine issues w To advertise online or in print, email thelowellads@yahoo.com w Contact us w Lowell High School Attn: The Lowell journalism classes w 1101 Eucalyptus Drive w San Francisco, CA 94132 w 415-759-2730 w thelowellnews@gmail.com

Towell he Lowell October 2017 vLv T2 he February 2017

TO THE EDITOR

Stand up and speak out, junior says Dear Lowellites, I’ve been a quiet and agreeable guy for a lot of my life, maybe even a pushover. Always having a smile on even when I wasn’t happy.

Always being crazy about being liked by everyone.

My agreeableness and openness were golden invitations to people that read, “Please attack me, I won’t do anything.” It got to the point where I could take insults and just fake-laugh them off all the time. I even assured people it was okay to insult me. After all, everyone was happy with it, right? So I guess I should be happy, too. Sometimes you go home and regret a lot of things. You wish you responded to that verbal jab instead of laughing along. A lot of resentful feelings build up. Your “shadow,” as psychoanalyst Carl Jung calls it, comes alive at home. That’s dangerous.

I think it’s more dangerous to be that likable pushover than an upright and defensive man. You can get to a point of agreeableness that when the group commits some malevolence, you become okay with it. It’s sad to think about how many times you’ve let something

bad, maybe even on a daily basis, happen to someone just because everyone else was okay with it. Like a racist remark, a disgusting slur or even bullying.

I remember talking about this book in AP European History, Ordinary Men, written by Christopher Browning. It was an interpretation of how Germans were able to commit the heinous acts of the Holocaust. He said that a lot of the soldiers fulfilled their duty out of obedience and peer pressure, not because of some primal hatred of Jewish people. He argued that humans are more influenced by human factors like loyalty than by belief systems. It’s a crazy thought: ordinary people, like us, can be exploited to fall into groupthink and do unspeakable things.

Now, I’m not saying that sacrificing some of your individuality is malevolent; brutal honesty isn’t needed in most situations. I’m saying we all need a balance. Don’t let people push you around. Speak the truth, not just for your own well-being, but for the world’s.

Raihan Alam, Class of 2019

TO THE EDITORS

The inevitable awkward over-the-stall eye contact

CARTOON

VALENTIN NGUYEN

Dear The Lowell readers, Think about your favorite teacher. The clubs they sponsor, the time they spend helping you with that tricky math problem, the hours they put in to help you become informed, well-rounded citizens. This issue’s cover story is about the struggle for teachers to find affordable housing in San Francisco. Many of our beloved teachers have been forced to leave the city in response to their low pay and the high cost of housing.

This issue is not just about the fact that housing in San Francisco is so darn pricey. It’s about valuing our teachers and making sure they’re

FROM THE EDITOR paid enough to live in the city and come to work each day without an exhausting commute.

Recently, a San Francisco Chronicle article about a homeless math teacher sparked conversation throughout the district about disproportionately low teacher pay and high housing costs. We, as students, have a responsibility to our teachers. We can’t let this conversation end.

Editors-in-Chief, Ella Murdock Gardner and Zahra Rothschild

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HOW THE HOUSING CRISIS IS FORCING TEACHERS OUT OF SAN FRANCISCO

By Emily Sobelman

COVER STORY

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owell social studies teacher Erin Hanlon, who is in her first year of teaching, wanted to live in the city where she works but was unable to find affordable housing. She wasn’t looking for much. “I just need a clean and quiet place to live where I can cook,” Hanlon said. But her search for housing yielded only less-than-optimal results. In one case, a lady refused to rent to her because Hanlon is not tenured. Most of the housing options that she could afford were “flop houses,” unclean and unattractive living complexes shared by many roommates, according to Hanlon. The only housing in San Francisco she could find within her budget wasn’t much more than a room in someone’s house. “You weren’t allowed to use the kitchen,” Hanlon said. “You had your room in his house, and the bathroom, and that was it.”

The cost of housing forced Hanlon out of the city to the East Bay and now to Pacifica, where she lives with a friend’s mother.

So why is it that a full-time employee at a prestigious high school can’t make enough to afford decent housing in the city where she teaches?

Erin Hanlon

The combination of unusually low teacher salaries and rising housing costs in San Francisco has been creating problems for teachers throughout the district. Many struggle to pay rent, and most can’t afford to buy houses.

Because of these obstacles, fewer people are entering the teaching profession in the first place, and many of those that do, switch professions after a short time.

The root of many of these problems is low teacher pay. SFUSD teachers receive wildly disproportionate pay compared to teachers in the rest of the state. San Francisco is one of the most expensive housing markets in the country, and has one of the lowest average teacher salaries in California. A credentialed first-year SFUSD teacher only makes $52,687 according to the contract between San Francisco Unified School District and United Educators of San Francisco. In contrast, a CIARA KOSAI credentialed first-year teacher with a Bachelor’s degree in the Santa Clara it was always plan A, and it was much more Unified School District makes $67,233, and conducive to family life,” Bell said. “If you first-year teachers there with a higher lev- had asked me when I was 17 what I wanted el of education can make up to $74,689. to do, it was to be a history teacher.”

More experienced SFUSD teachers Some people don’t understand how can make more than $52K. Unionized much work goes into being a good teacher, teachers are paid on a standardized scale, according to Hanlon. “They think, ‘oh you where all teachers of the same work ex- work from 8-3 and you have summers off ’ perience and level of education are given that’s easy,” she said. “I have never worked the same raise every year. So a teacher so hard in my life. I should be making a forcan make up to $91,934 a year, but that’s tune, because I’m putting in very long days.” only after 28 years of work, according to the SFUSD United Educators Union contract. That’s 28 years many people can’t afford to get through with the high cost of housing in San Francisco.

It’s also nowhere near the $107,922 that a top earner in Santa Clara Unified SO WHY IS teacher pay so low?

School District can make in less than half SFUSD’s budget comes primarily from that time, after only 12 years of experi- property taxes. In the 2016-17 fiscal year, ence. the city brought in around $2.5 billion. Of Social studies teacher Matthew Bell that amount, about a third goes to educais in his 10th year of teaching. He’s tional services, including SFUSD. The disa second-career teacher who left his trict’s budget has been increasing the last higher paying job working on political few years, with the 2016-17 budget being campaigns because he has a passion for $823.9 million, up $38 million from the year teaching. “Despite the significant pay cut, before. However, only $11 million of that

Arthur Simon

So why is teacher pay so low?

TOBI KAWANAMI

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Ciara Kosai

went to increasing employee salary.

According to assistant principal Dakotah Swett, this is due in part to other high operating costs. A large part of the budget goes to programs that other districts don’t often have, like Wellness Centers, immersion programs and English as a Second Language programs.

Still, the allocation of district funds is a bit mysterious. SFUSD administrators have looked into where the budget goes, with no concrete results, according to a San Francisco Chronicle article. According to school board president Shamann Walton, about 50 percent of the district’s budget goes to “overhead” costs, meaning district offices and personnel.

That means only 50 percent of our budget actually goes towards running schools and paying for teachers.

WITH HOW LITTLE money out of the budget ends up in teacher’s pockets, many can’t afford to live in San Francisco.

According to the Numbeo Cost of Living Index, which scores the price of living in a city based on prices for rent, groceries, restaurants and local purchasing power, San Francisco has the second overall highest cost of living in the continental United States, behind New York City. The factor that makes San Francisco so expensive is the cost of housing, with average monthly rent amounting to the steep price of $3684.

Take computer science teacher Arthur Simon. Simon was evicted from his home in 2002 under the Ellis Act, which gives landlords the unconditional right to evict tenants to “go out of business,” according to the San Francisco Tenants Union. Unable to find affordable housing for his family, he moved across the bay to Albany.

Bell is fortunate: he lives in the city with his family, but getting housing wasn’t easy.

Before moving here, his family lived in a rental in Pacifica until the landlord decided to renovate the house and jack up the rent, forcing them to move out. Luckily, Bell found a house in the Parkside neighborhood but he had to bargain with the landlord for a lower rent. “The place had been paid off for years and years, and we negotiated them down,” he said. “Basically saying, ‘Look I’m a teacher,

we have a daughter, so can you work with our family?’”

Still, it’s not cheap. “Our monthly rent takes up my entire paycheck,” Bell said. He can afford that only because his wife also works.

Though Bell wants to live and work in San Francisco long term, he doesn’t know if it’s possible. A move to a state with more affordable housing may be inevitable.“We are under no illusions that they aren’t going to raise our rent,” Bell said. “At some point the walls might close in on us.”

Bell wanted to buy in San Francisco but couldn’t afford it. Buying a house in San Francisco is an expensive proposition. A two or three bedroom house in the Lake Merced and Sunset areas costs upwards of $1,000,000. Average down payment on a house is between JENNIFER CHEUNG 10 and 20 percent of the total cost. For teachers who make community?” social studies teacher Amanda about $50,000 a year, the down payment Klein said. “Those are decisions I wouldn’t alone would comprise two to four years of have to make if I were 10 minutes away.” salary. And for teachers like Hanlon, who Isolation and lack of community are big are in the process of paying tuition or have reasons teachers across the nation leave their outstanding student loans, buying a house or jobs, according to a report by the National even paying rent is practically impossible.

Institute on Teaching and America’s Future.

Matthew Bell

“At some point the walls might close in on us.”

When teachers can’t afford to live in the city, they’re forced out. Living outside of the city doesn’t just make for a frustrating commute. Teachers who live far outside of San Francisco can’t be a part of the school community in the same way they could if they lived closer. “For a sports event or a play or whatever, I can’t leave or come back because it’s more than half an hour each way, so I need to decide: Do I go home and do work, or do I stay and be part of the school

TEACHER TURNOVER, THE percentages of teachers who leave their job compared to the amount who stay, has been increasing in recent years in San Francisco and across the country, according to a study by the National Department for Education Statistics.

However, teacher turnover is only part of the problem. Because wages are higher and the cost of living is lower in surrounding school districts, fewer and fewer people are applying to work in SFUSD in the first place. “New teachers and young teachers will go to a school district in the South Bay, or in the North Bay,” Swett said. “They don’t even apply.”

Fewer people are teaching altogether.

Eight percent of teachers in the United States

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COVER STORY

leave the profession each year, and 17 percent of new teachers will switch careers within five years, according to a study by the Department of Education. That number is about four percent higher than other similar professions in the United States, and higher than teacher attrition in other countries similar to the United States. $3,684w

Survey of Lowell Teachers:

“New teachers and young teachers will go to a school district in the South Bay, or in the North Bay. They don’t even apply.”

Though the teacher shortage has been a problem in all of SFUSD, the impact hits harder in low-performing schools, where teachers are often less satisfied with their work conditions.

SFUSD has a list of “hard to staff ” schools, which are mostly located in less affluent neighborhoods. The list has 25 schools of different levels, including Starr King Elementary, James Lick Middle School, Thurgood Marshall High, Everett Middle School, John O’Connell High School and Willie Brown Junior Middle School.

Teachers at these schools receive an extra $2000 on top of their salaries, but often still struggle. According to an Examiner article, 40 percent of Bayview school teachers were new in the 2016-17 school year, compared to the district’s overall 21 percent.

Turnover rates are already abnormally high in lowperforming schools, so teachers being unable to find adequate housing makes staffing them even harder.

TEACHER HOUSING, OR lack thereof has been a hot topic in San Francisco. People aren’t staying quiet. The United Educators Union held an emergency hearing on educator housing back in March. At the meeting, hundreds of SFUSD employees gathered to share their stories of trying to live in the city, all with one thing in common—it’s too expensive.

After decades of talk about affordable housing for teachers, a San Francisco Chronicle article on a homeless SFUSD teacher prompted Mayor Ed Lee to promise $44 million towards a subsidized teacher housing complex at the Francis Scott Key Annex in the Outer Sunset, a site already owned by the school district which is currently being used as a playground, skate park and office space.

INFOGRAPHICS BY MAXIMILIAN TIAO

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According to the mayor’s office, the complex will include over 150 mixed size units for low-to-middle income SFUSD educators. The housing is set to be available in mid 2022.

“The subsidized housing idea is a band-aid on a severed limb. I need to be paid more so that I can afford to teach here in the city.”

Projects like this were made easier to do in 2016 when the school district’s Employee Housing bill was passed. The goal was to have a state-wide policy that supported the development of rental properties for district employees on land already owned by the school district.

Other school districts have done similar things. Santa Clara Unified School District’s ¨Casa Del Maestro,” as the district calls it, is a 70-unit housing complex on district owned land, that has been around since 2002. It provides below-market housing for teachers for up to 7 years. A two-bedroom apartment costs less than half of what it would at a market price, at $1500 a month.

The Lowell staff conducted a survey of Lowell teachers to find out how the San Francisco housing crisis is impacting them.

Some teachers don’t think the subsidised housing proposal will get to the root of the problem. “The subsidized housing idea is a band-aid on a severed limb,” said one teacher. “I need to be paid more so that I can afford to teach here in the city.”

Another teacher expressed concern that her family would not qualify for subsidizing housing because her household income is too high, even though they’re still living paycheck-to-paycheck in their rent controlled apartment.

There are other ways to address the lack of teacher housing in San Francisco. Hanlon thinks repealing Prop 13, which limited the amount of property tax homeowners pay back in 1978, would be a better solution. According to her, this would incentivize people to build more housing, and help all “essential workers” to find housing, not just teachers.

Amanda Klein

THE CITY DOES have other programs aimed at helping teachers afford housing, including the “Teacher Next Door” program, which gives grants to SFUSD teachers to help them buy houses. But qualifying for the program is fairly difficult.

In order to get a loan, no one in a teacher’s household can have owned a house in the past three years. In addition, the teacher must contribute at least 5 percent to the purchase of the house. Even then, the $40,000 loan is miniscule compared to the SHYLA DUONG price of a house in San Francisco.

Even teachers who do qualify for Teacher Next Door find it hard to use. “The “Part of it is that people information is not convenient,” Hanlon said. don’t value teaching the Teachers must attend an informational session to be in the program, however these same way they value sessions can be inconvenient. “They tell us the day before, and the meeting is in some other professions, like weird part of the city, it’s not easy to undermedicine and law,” stand or accessible,” Hanlon said. “They tell you to bring your bills and your budget.”

Union representative Katherine Melvin suffers. Simply acknowledging the problem is skeptical of the program. “It’s more work can’t give educators better salaries and living conditions. Though efforts have been than it’s worth,” she said.

Not all teachers even know about the made, there’s still leagues to go. According program, especially new teachers who are to Klein, the place to start is with our values. more likely to benefit from it, like Klein. “Part of it is that people don’t value teachWhen asked, she said she “didn’t know it ing the same way they value other professions, like medicine and law,” she said. “You existed.”

When teachers can’t afford to live in the don’t go into teaching for the money. You communities they work in, the entire district get teachers who want to teach, but it would be nice if we were equally compensated.” v

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Lack of Synergy

By Hannah Ferguson

“F

irst of all, it took me forever to login, but when I finally did, I was like, ‘What is this low-budget, before-ourlifetime piece of [junk]?’”

This was sophomore Sarah Jiang’s reaction to the new Synergy interface that has replaced School Loop throughout the San Francisco School District as of the beginning of the 2017-18 school year. Along with many other students and teachers, Jiang has found the switch from School Loop to Synergy to be problematic.

One reason for the change has to do with saving money.

Previously, SFUSD had both Synergy and School Loop contracts and paid for each contract separately. The switch to Synergy will save the district a total of $182,000 annually, according to Ed Tech Supervisor Sarah Ashton.

Another reason for the switch is to improve accessibility. One way the Synergy Information System (SIS) makes grades more accessible for parents is through family portals, said SFUSD’s Chief of Technology Officer, Melissa Dodd. In School Loop, parents needed to create separate accounts if their children attended different schools. After the switch to Synergy, parents are able to view all their children’s information in different tabs using a single login.

While this sounds efficient, both Jiang and junior Quinn Albert expressed that their parents do not find this new feature to be quite as much of an improvement as SFUSD made it seem. “If this is the only good new feature, then it makes me wonder honestly why we had to switch,” Albert said.

Another big change is the fact that Synergy’s only operational communication system is through email. This has caused some problems. For example, teachers have found it difficult to communicate with their students. “It is impossible, through Synergy itself, to email my former students,” English teacher Jennifer Moffitt said. Her issue was that she could only email students in her current classes, so if someone in a club she sponsors wanted to contact her,

“If this is the only good new feature, then it makes me wonder honestly why we had to switch.”

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it would need to be through Gmail.

Chemistry teacher Bryan Marten believes that School Loop had much better mass communication options. Marten also liked the aspect of School Loop that had district-wide news and announcements as a section that all students and teachers could view. According to him, this was particularly useful for students looking for internships and work opportunities in the Bay Area.

Senior Jared Wang misses this aspect of School Loop as well. “School Loop’s column of announcements was a key feature that Synergy does not have, and I do think that it was pretty useful to see what is going on district-wide, but now it is just blank,” he said.

However, according to counselor Jonathan Fong, Synergy’s basic level of functionality is similar to School Loop’s, and, in some cases, it provides even more ease of access for teachers. “Teachers can take attendance and can basically call up things like they would normally be able to, as well as contact info,” he said. “In the past, they could get that information via the counselling departmwent, or the secretary if they had needed to. Now the information is easier to access for teachers.”

Marten, former chair of Lowell’s technology committee, disagrees with this assessment of Synergy. “The filing system is confusing, as

NEWS well as the document naming,” he said.

Despite this, Dodd said that “the same functions that teachers and students have in School Loop is available within Synergy. It’s similar to School Loop — obviously it’s a different system, so the layout is a little different. But it’s very intuitive, easy-to-use and navigate, and there are clear buttons that highlight what actions need to be taken.”

The district’s switch to using Synergy was in part meant to make finalizing report card grades easier, according to Fong. At the end of each quarter, during the grading window, teachers were required to upload all their grades to School Loop. Then, school administrators and the district transferred and stored Lowell students’ grades in Synergy before report cards could be sent out to students. “Theoretically it will make the submission of report card grades seamless and easier, since they’ll already be in Synergy,” Fong said.

However, due to teachers having difficulties with inputs, the deadline for grade submissions was extended from Oct. 4 to Oct. 8.

Although some of the concerns that other teachers had were resolved after training sessions administered by the district authorities, there is still a large concern regarding the transfer of documents — the instructions provided by the district only sync the files and assignments to Google Classroom, according to chemistry teacher Michelle Trimble. The issue now is the amount of time it takes to transfer the assignments out of School Loop before the portal is closed, the date of which was moved to the end of the year. “I counted the steps it takes to transfer a single file from School Loop to Synergy, and the total is 18, for a single file,” Marten said. “Each employee would have to sit there and translate every single document using 18 clicks and popups and all that to a new format, otherwise it was all going to be deleted.”

Synergy training started last spring for schools throughout the district in order to prepare teachers for the 2017-18 school year.

According to Trimble, the class was run by district officials on special assignment, not representatives from Synergy. The class covered the “absolute basics,” according to Trimble. The questions that she needed answered were not within the official’s ability to answer.

SFUSD has a website dedicated to Synergy with information for teachers and staff, students and families. Although there are Synergy user guides available on the Edupoint official website for administrators and teachers, these were last updated in 2013.

Trimble ran into problems using Synergy, prompting her to switch over to Google Classroom. “I resisted for a long time, because I didn’t want to force my students to use multiple platforms,” Trimble said.

“But when I saw how unorganized [Synergy] was from the student’s viewpoint, I knew that I had to make the change.”

Like Trimble, several other teachers have made a second switch from Synergy to Google Classroom. So far, she is very happy with her decision. “It requires less hunting around for the right boxes to check, less effort to get the same product online, and I can organize it in such a way to separate classwork assignments and homework, which can be useful for absent students,” she said. Marten also switched, and for him, posting assignments has become much easier, along with having access to a more comprehensive calendar.

Students are finding Google Classroom to be a far more useful tool, as well. According to junior Devin Ly, the format is much easier, causing significantly less misunderstandings between teachers and their students. Jiang also sees Classroom as an alternative to Synergy.

“This other program has helped me to have less freak outs about due dates and such,” she said.

Google Classroom also allows students to easily turn in assignments online. “Through this, I haven’t had to print as many assignments as I had to in the past,” Wang said. So far, two of his teachers have switched, but he says that he hopes that more teachers will soon. v

“Theoretically it will make the submission of report card grades seamless and easier, since they’ll already be in Synergy.”

HANNAH COSSELMON The Lowell October 2017

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By Alli s W hen I was in middle school, my friends would spend hours talking about boys. I would sit quietly during conversations about who was cute and who was not, and most importantly, who we had crushes on. I wouldn’t say anything during those conversations, because I had never had a crush. I didn’t know what it felt like. Eventually, I convinced myself that having a crush just meant picking a boy I thought was nice and telling people that I “liked” him. To my surprise, the whole class believed me, and I spent the rest of middle school pretending to like boys and thinking that was all there was to it.

But in seventh grade, I got my first real crush, and it wasn’t on a boy. At the time I had a best friend, and naturally I always wanted to hang out with her. But it went deeper than that. I didn’t know how to explain it to myself; all I knew was that I really loved being around this person and I didn’t want that to stop when we graduated.

At the time, I had no idea I was experiencing a crush. I learned about the LGBT community in my seventh grade political science class, but it took almost a year after that for me to realize that I might be queer.

I spent the summer between eighth grade and freshman year trying to figure out if I was gay. I researched. I took online quizzes. I would imagine a girl sitting next to me, and then a boy, and try to judge how I mentally reacted to each. By the time the end of August arrived, I was certain that I wasn’t attracted to boys, but rather girls.

I was gay, in both senses of the word.

Discovering my queerness made me incredibly happy. I now knew why I had never gotten a crush on a boy. But more importantly, I was just excited that I had learned about this new part of myself. I wanted the whole world to know I was a lesbian and proud.

My mistake was thinking everyone else would be as happy for me as I was for myself. I soon came out to all of my old friends, and from my first day at Lowell I was open about being gay. I never expected any discrimination. I was in San Francisco, after

all, a city known for being accepting of the LGBT community. It has been described as the “gay capital of the world.” There wasn’t supposed to be homophobia here.

Except, there was homophobia. I was just too naive to see it.

As a freshman, two major things happened to me that made me realize that there was homophobia in my community. The first was when I came out to my grandmother. She and I liked to have political discussions, and her opinions were always liberal. I thought that because of this, she wouldn’t have any objections to me being gay. So I decided to come out to her. One evening we were having a conversation in her living room, and I happily told her that I was a lesbian. To my surprise and dismay, she launched into a

to stay positive, telling myself that at least I wouldn’t experience something like that from my peers. We were a different, more accepting generation.

I was partially right. I’ve never experienced microaggressions from people my age. Instead what I experienced was worse. Not long after the incident with my grandmother, I walked into my biology classroom to find that someone had written slurs on my desk. The anonymous person had written my name, called me a common slur for gay people, and written some very explicit sexual harassment.

Despite the fact that the insult wasn’t said to my face and the perpetrator was anonymous, the words still hurt. I remember feeling detached, because I was truly shocked to receive something like this. I didn’t tell anyone, and class was half over before I thought to erase the words. For the rest of the day, I couldn’t pay attention to my classes.

And once I got home, I shut myself in my room and started crying.

I was not only hurt by what the person had written — I was hurt because they had written it at all. I had convinced myself that San Francisco was this happy little bubble of acceptance and positivity where I would never experience discrimination based on my sexuality, but that experience shattered these expectations.

In the time since those incidents, I’ve grown wiser — and more cynical. I am still quite open about my sexuality among people, but it’s not one of the first things someone learns about me anymore. I’ve taught myself to get to know someone and judge their character before coming out. For example, I am not out to my devout catholic extended family in New York. And when talking to that extended family, I’m fully prepared to say I have a boyfriend named Emmet instead of a girlfriend named Emma.

Being gay shouldn’t be thought of as something different or wrong, but sadly, that is still the case. My city is full of opportunities to celebrate my sexuality, but I have learned that even in places like San Francisco, prejudice remains. v

I had convinced myself that San Francisco was this happy little bubble of acceptance and positivity where I would never experience discrimination based on my sexuality. lecture about going through phases, the “gay lifestyle,” and teenage experimentation. She ended it by asking me, “But, don’t you want to have children?”

I had no idea what to do, so I found myself saying that I agreed with her. I was probably just going through a phase, I said. We started talking about other things, and I didn’t bring it up again. I knew that I wasn’t just “experimenting,” but I also knew that I definitely never wanted to have a conversation about being queer with my grandmother again.

That experience shook me a little, but I soon got over it. My grandmother was old, and I should have expected that she had outdated views on homosexuality. I managed

The Lowell October 2017

v

15

NEWS

THE ROAD TO COLLEGE: New college counselor guides students through application process

By Olivia Moss

A

s the fall semester gets underway, one constant thought lurks in the back of most senior’s minds: the dreaded college admissions process. Faced with personal essays, dozens of college choices and SATs, many seniors struggle to keep the stress at bay as they juggle their applications on top of the rest of their schoolwork. Last April, after numerous requests, Lowell’s School Site Council decided to fund an official college counselor.

Maria Aguirre, who was an academic counselor at Lowell for eight years, is now Lowell’s college counselor. Her job entails getting information about colleges out to parents and students, guiding them through the admissions process, and providing information and support through registry visits and individual meetings with students during the day, according to Aguirre.

Aguirre’s desk is in the College Counseling Information Center, and she is accessible to students from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. when she’s not leading workshops.

The workshops will focus on different areas of the college admissions process and applications such as personal statements, types of colleges and how to get financial aid and scholarships.

Some will be held after school, but they will also be held during the day so that students who work or have extracurriculars after school can still attend.

Senior Alvin Zhang attended a workshop on starting UC applications during fifth block on Aug. 28. He started his college search this summer, but he said he would have begun earlier if Lowell had had a college counselor last year. “I know in my junior year I was definitely interested in a few colleges, but I didn’t really know how the application worked, so I think having an actual college counselor would have been really helpful,” he said.

Senior Sierra Kirkpatrick set up a group meeting with the college counselor and some of her friends on Sept. 5. She was already fairly knowledgeable about college, having already worked on her common and UC applications, but she said Aguirre was able to answer a lot of the more specific questions she had about the college admissions process. After worrying about having to get letters of recommendation from eight different teachers, Aguirre immediately alleviated Kirkpatrick’s stress by telling her she only needed one letter. “Being able to get the answers immediately

18

v The Lowell October 2017 The Lowell February 2017

16

is amazing because a lot of people don’t have that opportunity,” Kirkpatrick said.

Senior Claire Garcia, a 2016-2017 student representative on the SSC, suggested hiring a college counselor for the VICCI Center at the Feb. 27 meeting. “I believe that having a college counselor at Lowell will help students manage their stress,” she said.

“College applications are already very stressful, as is Lowell, but having some who can help guide you towards success helps manage the stress.”

Garcia was not the first to try to get a college counselor at Lowell. Many other students have been asking for one for years, saying they want more support getting into college, according to assistant principal Margaret Peterson. “A lot of people worked really hard to get this,” she said. “It’s been a long time coming and we’re excited to be able to help more students.”

The SSC is funding half of the position, and the Lowell Alumni Association voted to pay the rest.

Since 97.73 percent of Lowell students plan to go to college, according to a senior class survey by the Lowell Alumni Association in 2016-17, Lowell has a high demand for college counseling services. For years, it fell mostly on the academic counselors to take on that role, as well as juggling schedule changes and overseeing their designated registries.

The school board initially believed there was no need for a college counselor, since academic counselors could provide the necessary college help, but “through the years, as college has become more competitive to get in, [they] have sensed more pressure and more stress from the students, and when that’s the case, they need more support,” Aguirre said.

Since VICCI Center volunteers aren’t trained to help students with college and often have full-time jobs, they are limited in the number and depth of services they can provide for students, according to VICCI Center volunteer coordinator Beth O’Leary.

As a result, Lowell has relied on academic counselors to take on a college counseling role, and Peterson said that with their 350 student caseload, the highest workload in the school district, they weren’t able to do as much as they’d like to in terms of helping students with college. “Our counselors are organizing and calling

NEW COLLEGE COUNSELOR MARIA AGUIRRE WORKS WITH A STUDENT IN THE VICCI CENTER

TOBI KAWANAMI colleges, getting them to come in, and doing all this work on top of all the other work they’re doing to try to meet the needs of their students,” Peterson said.

Over the past eight years, the number of letters of recommendation each counselor had to write increased from around 45 letters per year to 70 per year as more students started looking outside the UC system, which doesn’t require recommendation letters, according to Aguirre.

Aguirre says that her position can reduce the workload of the academic counselors while providing more college workshops and services for students. In previous years, they were only able to hold three or four workshops a year, and never before were they able to hold events in the first two weeks of school. The number of workshops will likely double from last year, Aguirre said.

The amount of individual support a student can get is based on their own needs, according to Aguirre. Some students have visited her almost every day to work on their applications, and some have already started attending workshops.

It will still fall on the academic counselors to write recommendation letters, but by helping with individual applications and scheduling colleges to come in, Aguirre will reduce their workload.

Academic counselor Amber Wilson said that Aguirre can reduce the time that she would have spent working with individual students that were just sitting and working on their applications, allowing her to focus on the needs of other students. Working with individual students is very time-consuming, “so what’s helpful is that [Aguirre] can alleviate some of that time.”

Though she plans to focus on seniors, Aguirre welcomes juniors and underclassmen to get information and attend visits from college representatives so by senior year, they feel confident about the expectations for applying to college.

She’s also planning to redecorate the VICCI Center to make it feel more welcoming for students. “I want the college center to feel like a student space where they feel welcomed and inspired, not like a conference room,” Aguirre said. Some of the file cabinets and bulkier furniture have already been removed, and one of the tables will be taken out to make room for comfortable lounge chairs donated by Wikipedia.

She said she also hopes to write a grant and get laptops for students to use during their visit.

Aguirre looks forward to “getting to know students, being a support, somebody that they could talk to and feel like they have the tools and the knowledge to make the best of whatever path they choose to follow.” v

“College applications are already very stressful, as is Lowell, but having someone who can help guide you towards success helps manage the stress.”

The Lowell October 2017

v 17

18

NEWS

Bridging the Physics Gender

Gap

By Raine Yingru Hu

“G

ood morning, Mr. Shapiro!” Every morning, this loud student greeting erupts from AP Physics C teacher Richard Shapiro’s classroom. This may sound like a regular class, but anyone walking in would notice one thing immediately — the apparent lack of female students.

The percentage of female students taking AP Physics C plunged from 45 percent to 23.6 percent this year. Although there has always been more male than female students in this class, the gender gap has widened compared to previous years. This gender gap in AP Physics C is an enduring issue at Lowell.

AP Physics C: Mechanics and AP Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism are college-level, calculus-based physics courses. The majority of high schools in the United States only offer AP Physics C: Mechanics as a two-semester course to students, according to the College Board. At Lowell, AP Physics C: Mechanics and AP Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism are offered as a combined yearlong

Tobi Kawanami TOBI KAWANAMI 18 v The Lowell October 2017 v The Lowell February 2017

course, with Mechanics taught in the first semester and Electricity and Magnetism in the second.

The majority of Lowell students are girls, comprising about 58 percent of the entire student body. Because of this, sometimes the lower-level physics classes have more girls than boys. For example, the percentage of female students taking a regular physics class is 65 percent. However, the percentage of female students does not hold in AP Physics C, according to Shapiro, who has witnessed this trend since he started teaching physics at Lowell about 30 years ago.

This year, there are only 17 female students out of the 72 students taking AP Physics C. In one of the two AP Physics C sections, there are only six girls. Surprisingly, this is not the lowest female to male ratio in Lowell’s history.

When it was first taught in 1992, there were exactly five girls in the AP Physics C class, said Shapiro. Ever since then, Shapiro has aimed to encourage more girls to sign up for this class. Shapiro has

made continuous efforts to close the gender gap. In recent years, the female to male ratio in physics C had increased, rising up to 45 percent in 2016. But the ratio slumped this year.

One reason the ratio may have slumped is that many female Lowell students may not fully understand the difficulty level of this class before dismissing it for consideration from their class schedules.

Senior Ying Chen, who is currently taking AP Calculus BC, opted to take AP Physics 1 instead of AP Physics C. “I don’t want to start too high, because I am not sure if I’ll be able to do it,” Chen said. Another senior, Monica Tse, who is also taking AP Physics 1 shares the same sentiment. “I did not have any knowledge and background in physics, so I felt I shouldn’t take a harder course,” Tse said.

What many students may not know is that AP Physics C, which is based on calculus, actually may be easier than the algebra-based physics class for students taking AP Calculus BC. “I feel this class is very easy if you listen to the teacher. This class is not like AP Physics 1 or 2,” said senior Jasmine Zeng, who is taking Physics C. “In physics C, it gives you the reason behind the concept.”

Many of the female seniors in AP Physics C said they would like to encourage more girls to take the class. “There are so many smart girls at Lowell, there is no reason why they shouldn’t take this class if they are interested in it,” said senior Natalie Bunimovitz. Senior Sakuntala Jagabattuni added, “I don’t want to push girls just because there is a gender gap, I want to push them to get an interest in this thing.”

Senior Karen Wang explained why girls need to break the biased loop by trying STEM classes. “It is like a loop, people generally think that girls are not good at math, so then girls are discouraged from taking STEM classes,” Wang said. She believes people should not be biased against one gender in the STEM field.

All of these female students who were interviewed plan to study a STEM-related field in college and they believe this class will help them whether they major in physics or not.

Wang believes physics will help her major in computer science in college, because “when you are making a program or a game, sometimes you need to use the knowledge that you get from physics,” she said. But there are also some challenges to the course as one would expect from a college-level course. “We are using a college freshman textbook, which makes me struggle a little bit on the material,” Bunimovitz said. Overall, all of these female students say

AT LOWELL,

17 72 AP PHYSICS C STUDENTS ARE GIRLS.

they have fun in this class because there are a lot of interesting topics and experiments.

There are great advantages to taking AP Physics C in high school, said Shapiro. First of all, this college-level class provides students with an advantage in college admission. Through this class, students develop their college-level academic skills and impress college admission officers by showing the ability to handle a college class. The class also prepares students interested in future math-related STEM majors, according to Zeng. “It opens your mind of the world. We only learn calculus in math class, but physics helps you to apply math,” she said.

The benefits are applied to both genders.

Lowell students are doing an excellent job in the AP Physics C exam each year. According to Shapiro, the percentage of Lowell students scoring a 4 or 5 on the AP exam is more than 90 percent every year.

If high school students take the calculusbased physics class, which is required in college general curriculum for science majors, they may have an advantage over their peers in college. If students pass the AP exam in high school, they do not need to take it again in most colleges and they can graduate earlier and save tuition. “I firmly believe that calculus-based physics is the gateway course for all the sciences.” Shapiro said. “If you have not taken this class, you just have to take two to four semesters in college as a minimum requirement.”

The gender gap in this calculus-based physics course is not only a problem at Lowell — it is a nationwide phenomenon.

In 2017, only 28.3 percent of the AP Physics C Mechanics exam takers and 24.3 percent of Electricity and Magnetism test takers in 2017 were female, according to the College Board.

To encourage girls to sign up for the class, Shapiro had his female AP Physics C students visit precalculus classes and AP Physics 1 classes to speak with girls who might be interested in taking AP Physics C. “I did not tell them what to say,” Shapiro said. “I would say, ‘Look, do you believe more girls should take this? You go tell them why they should take this. Just say what you feel, what you believe. If you don’t think so, just don’t go.’”

In addition, Shapiro holds a yearly event where female college students who took AP Physics C at Lowell come back to Lowell during spring break. These college students hold an all-female, no-male-allowed event in

See PHYSICS on pg. 21 The Lowell October 2017

v

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to Wenning. “You need to get students out of the streets because fire trucks are going to be there,” Wenning said. R ather than walking down the fire lane toward the soccer field, Wenning takes his class across the fire lane and down a dirt path that runs alongside it.

“They still have to cross but at least they’re not walking 100 yards down, because that takes time,” Wenning said.

According Lowell’s publicized evacuation routes, classes are allowed to utilize the fire lane to evacuate to the soccer field.

However, according to San Francisco Fire Department Inspector Kerry Mann, these routes were not permitted in the original evacuation plans.

After being interviewed by The Lowell about this issue, Mann met with SFUSD Buildings and Grounds manager Nathan Walmer at Lowell on July 19 to

look over the evacuation plans.

According to Mann, students are only supposed to exit the building from the front and sides, and are not supposed to use the fire lane to get to the soccer fields. “They’re not supposed to be exiting out the back,” she said.

Walmer is now talking to Beltran about the disconnect between Lowell’s evacuation routes and the district’s original plan, according to Mann.

Lowell should improve the current evacuation routes so that classes in the science building can safely evacuate without blocking the fire trucks. Rather than just having certain drills during registry, Lowell should begin to perform drills during different times of the day to more accurately simulate real emergency situations. Overall, the administration should review and improve the current methods

and procedures for the safety of everyone on campus. v

From PHYSICS on pg. 19 the current AP Physics C classroom where female students are provided a completely private space to talk about their experiences as women in STEM. This event has already successfully been held in 2014, 2015, 2016 and will take place again this school year.

In order to get more female students in AP Physics C classes in the future, Shapiro has decided that students who did not take any previous physics class but are taking AP Calculus BC can enroll in this class. Students that have taken a physics class but are not currently enrolled in any calculus class may also enroll in the class. v

JOIN

JOURN

From EDITORIAL on pg. 2 a visual communication system and writing grants for the materials required. This proposition will require support from the school district and school staff because training time for teachers will be mandatory, according to Giles.

Instead of video systems for the future, the administration should focus on fixing the current PA system in case of telephones malfunctioning, as the PA and telephone systems serve to back up one another.

There are also problems with some of the actual evacuation routes that the school needs to address. For example, during a fire alarm or drill, classes from the science building use the fire lane to evacuate to the soccer field.

However, fire vehicles also use this road to reach the source of the fire.

This poses a safety hazard to these students, according

The Lowell October 2017

v 21

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