Natalie Sanchez had no inkling that the summer job she’d heard about through her high school, Philadelphia Virtual Academy, would launch her toward a new life. In 2021, Sanchez, then 17, worked as an intern at PECO Energy Company, a position she landed through the nonprofit Philadelphia Youth Network (PYN). “We [interns] worked 20 hours
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Anyone who has raised children knows the frustration of watching a kid imitate your worst habits. Maybe you hear them swearing, exactly how you do. Maybe you tell them to get off their phone, and then they catch you checking yours under the table at dinner. Maybe you tell them to eat better, and you
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The late autumn wind began to bite during the 1838 Black Metropolis walking tour last year, but historian Michiko Quinones warmed the 10 participants with stories of riches, a riot and secret dealings in Philly’s antebellum Black community. “Some 20,000 Black people lived in Philadelphia in the late 1830s,” Quinones said. “The 1838 census showed
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Michael Cano hadn’t thought much about environmental issues or agriculture before attending Lankenau, the School District of Philadelphia’s environmental sciences magnet high school. “I found out about [Lankenau] because of family that went there before me and told me of a positive experience they had.” By his junior year he found himself in Washington, D.C.,
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On a damp morning in July, children spill around the corner of the Tree House and flit through the woodland garden exploring the grounds surrounding the Wissahickon Environmental Center (WEC) in the northern end of Wissahickon Valley Park. “Will we find bears?” one young girl asks. Jeneen Helms, an assistant from the West Mill Creek
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It was a muggy morning, on a midsummer Wednesday, and the fish weren’t biting. A dozen or so preteens kept dropping their baited lines into the water from a dock and pulling them out empty. Or often, tangled, requiring repeated assistance of nearby camp counselors. A tedious exercise? Perhaps. But just beneath the surface were
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In 2023, a new rash of school closures due to asbestos offered the latest gut punch to the Philadelphia education community. But advocates say changes in Harrisburg and Philly offer the best hope in their lifetimes for something better. When Marybeth Reinhold started teaching English at Frankford High School, it marked an exciting return
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Ena hannigan wants to be at school — a fact that her mom, Erike De Veyra, is overjoyed about. Ena, who will enter the fourth grade at John Moffet Elementary School in September, is already an active student in her school. She’s a member of one of Moffet’s STEM clubs, Girls Who Code, and is
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The big library — the size of several classrooms — in the Cook-Wissahickon School in Roxborough stands as a monument to activism. Closed for several years in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the library now serves pre-kindergarteners through middle schoolers with story hours and a robust lending program that enrich the lives of students.
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At Spiral Q’s West Philadelphia headquarters, puppet artists cut out cardboard, shape it into bulldozers and paint it to prepare for a protest march against the 76ers’ plans for a Chinatown arena. “There’s something childlike about them,” says Jacque (who did not provide a last name), while taking a break from painting cardboard miniatures of
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Birds can fly safer around Springside Chestnut Hill Academy thanks to third graders who installed a window film with a pattern of white polka dots. On May 11 students at the school, which partnered with Bird Safe Philly, applied the window film in an effort to keep birds from getting injured or killed in collisions
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