dr.paula

If the Empowerteen Middle School Retreat could be summed up in just a few words, it’d be described as loud and exhilarating. The participants showed their enthusiasm with high energy and hollers of approval. Almost every activity was met with good spirits and full effort, which was one of the special characteristics of this year’s group.  The Middle School Retreat, like the High School Retreat, was centered around brain activity

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Kris Sanders

During the school year, it’s easy to keep in touch with friends. You see each other nearly every day for months! But when summer break rolls around, it may become more difficult. Difficult, but not impossible. If you want to meet up with your friends, there are ways around most of the obstacles.  Starting with the most important thing, getting your friends interested. It’s summer, so you might still message

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Daryan Cem

Generative AI is everywhere. Anything you can imagine can now be generated using AI tools– images for posters, plans for businesses, even videos with premises wild that they go viral within days. Some estimates say that 71% of new social media posts utilize generative AI in some way or another. Considering how much time people spend online, this means that exposure to it has increased dramatically– and as what it

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Kris Sanders

Earlier today, my math class was told that at the end of the month, everyone would be taking a final test of everything we learned over the semester. When I heard this, I sighed. The last thing I wanted to do was start preparing for some big test, answering hundreds of questions for hours. As my advisory teacher talked about it a bit more, I started doodling on a piece

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Grace Bland

The best part about Empowerteen’s high school summer retreat is seeing the close bonds the participants and mentors develop. Within a matter of hours during that first day of the week, the participants began cracking jokes with the mentors and looking up to them as both role models as well as friends.              “I would say my favorite part about yesterday was just the morning when everyone starts rolling in,”

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Noah Gonzalez

Many teenagers have probably heard this sort of phrase at least five times in their life. Parents go on about how growing up was different and “better” than compared to today. While the “better” part is debatable, the “different” part is very much truthful, as the world keeps changing and developing.  I decided to interview my Mom and my Nana, as they both grew up in very different times. To

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