Project Learn Lawns Signs Get New Design

By Dylan Allender

Dylan Allender and Elie Lubin show the Project Learn lawn sign.

Colorful and bright Project Learn School (PLS) lawn signs are on the lawns all over the Philadelphia area. Project Learn has been using this type of advertisement for many years. This year the signs are very different. The colors, blue, yellow, orange and white, were chosen to look like the new PLS brochure. They were made by Eric Moore, a PLS parent. He was chosen to design the signs because he is good with computer images. Eric said it was not hard to make the sign; he used a program called Adobe In-Design so it did not take long. He started on Sept 10th with the design and was finished on Sept 14th. Eric’s favorite part about making the signs was, “all the lovely colors.”  He worked with Aisha Anderson-Oberman, the admissions director of the school, and PLS parents, Janet Gala and Donna Waxler.

The lawn signs are used to let people know when PLS is having an open house. The signs have the school’s phone number on it  so people can contact Aisha.  This helps Aisha plan for the open houses.

    You may not see many signs in Mt.Airy because most of them were stolen from people’s lawns. The school does not know who took the signs, but Donna Allender who put them out, is sure it was not a Henry School student. “I placed a sign on Sedgwick Street on the lawn of a friend at 12:30 and went to the Co-op around the corner. I stopped for coffee and at 2:00, I drove past the house. The sign was gone. School was still in session so it had to be an adult who took the sign,” said Donna. People used to think that missing signs were taken by children, but now it’s clear that it’s not always them. All the signs in West Mt.Airy were stolen, but none in East Mt.Airy and Chestnut Hill were taken.The school hopes whoever is taking the signs will stop.

Look for PLS’ beautiful signs whenever you are in East Mt.Airy and Chestnut Hill.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

The Halloween that Almost Wasn't

By Surya Bromley

Every year, for around eighteen years, at Project Learn School (PLS) there are a bunch of Halloween festivities run by the Jr. High students on Halloween. This year Hurricane Sandy delayed the celebrations until the Friday after Halloween. Even though it was two days later, the kids still made sure it was as much fun as ever.
    The 6th and 7th graders do a carnival with games and prizes which Liz Ben-Yaacov, the Jr. High math and grammar teacher supervises.  At each booths they give out some kind of prize like pencils, candy, and snacks like pretzels and chips. This year there were about seven booths; some of them were: K and N Course of Terror... If You Dare, run by Nasya Howard and Kennedy Alstin-Lucky where you raced someone else in a series of obstacles---like running through tires and throwing a ball through  a hula-hoop. Barbies Beauty Boo-tique, run by Zoe Gold and Surya Bromley was a booth where you could get your face painted or get your hair colored with colored hairspray. Ball of Fire,  run by Jimmy Murphy and Jhakur Hall was a game where you threw a ball at stacked cups and tried to knock them down.
    The 8th grade at PLS is always in charge of making a haunted house for the rest of the school to go through with help from Liam Gallagher, it happens in one of the classrooms that the teachers generously let the eighth grade use for the week of the haunted house. This year the theme was a haunted circus.  Emma Dudnick, one of the students involved in the Haunted House said, “I enjoyed working on the Haunted House and coming up with the ideas. I think it turned out well and everyone liked it and everyone was scared.”  One of the challenges the 8th graders have each year is making the Haunted House experience scary enough for the older kids but not too scary for the younger kids. This year’s Haunted House was just right. Nasya howard a seventh grader at PLS said that “The haunted house was really scary this year. My favorite part was when Matthew Wilson, one of the eighth graders, dressed as a evil clown jumped out of a tunnel that they made from the back staircase and started screaming at us.” Another thing that is hard is to decide on a good idea for the Haunted House. “We all brainstormed ideas and some people wanted to be certain parts like the villain or the clown,” said Emma, “ a lot of it revolved around our idea for the tunnel.”   
    “The Halloween Festivities were fun. I liked the Haunted House and thought it was well done!” Zack Waxler, a seventh grader at PLS, said when asked how he thought the day went.

New Project Learn School Brochure is a Big Hit!

By: Elie Lubin

  Project Learn, has a beautiful, colorful, wonderful, brochure. The brochure was made, because it is an easy way for people to learn about the school without coming in. The brochure quotes what kids and grown-ups say about the school. It helps make publicity for the school. Sometimes people pick up the brochure at coffee shops, bookstores, and other kinds of shops. They read it, call Aisha Anderson-Oberman, the Admissions Director, and schedule a time to tour the school.
      The main headline of the brochure is “A Cooperative School Community” It tells about the different activities, classes, and other fun stuff that is happening at P.L. It tells: How we are cooperative school community, academics, facts about the school, and the mission statements. It also tells about why the parents and teachers think that the school is good. Here is a quote: “At Project Learn, the kids get to choose some of what they learn, and some of the activities that they get to do.”
     There is a committee that puts the brochure together, and they are called the Marketing Committee. The names of the people that are on the Marketing Committee: Donna Waxler, the chair, leader of the Committee, and, Janet Gala, Jordan Shapiro, Shawnee Brown, and Aisha Anderson-Oberman. They talk about what to put in the brochure, like the answers to the questions that people ask a lot. They also talk about other things that are happening, and worthwhile to hear about. The committee puts the brochure out in the different places you see them. After they are ready online, they print it, in color. When that’s done, the committee takes it to a professional printing company, and have it printed there.
      The brochure is a helpful thing used for many reasons. All of the reasons are important, so the brochure does a lot of good for the school. When the brochure is made for the year, people see it, and love it, and that is what the school tries to do, bring smiles to peoples faces, (And help them learn.) so we feel happy at the school, knowing we have done our job.