The 9th Grade Experience

As we approach the Thanksgiving holiday, it's a great time to look back and reflect on the many positives in our lives for the seventh annual Attitude of Gratitude special episode. Over 40 members of the Emmaus High School community took time during this busy period of the school year to share a little bit about what makes them #EastPennProud and thankful. So before you fill your plate with fo...

This episode of the 9th Grade Experience Podcast features Neil Moyer, a graduate of Emmas High School from the class of 1953, who shares his experiences as a freshman during the 1949-1950 school year. He discusses his academic choices, extracurricular activities, memorable teachers, and the unique social dynamics of high school life at that time. The conversation sheds light on the historical cont...

As we approach the Thanksgiving holiday, it's a great time to look back and reflect on the many positives in our lives for the sixth annual Attitude of Gratitude special episode. Over 60 members of the Emmaus High School community took time during this busy period of the school year to share a little bit about what makes them #EastPennProud and thankful. So before you fill your plate with food, on...

Join us as we chat with Chris Stone, the freshman tennis sensation from Emmaus High School, who recently won the District 11 boys single tennis championship. Chris shares his journey through 9th grade, detailing how his brother’s presence in high school eased his transition. Despite initial challenges with the workload and school size, Chris quickly adapted, finding his stride both academically an...

In this episode, we delve into the journey of securing employment as a young individual, exploring the experiences and insights of our guest, Dorney Park Recruitment Manager Katie Knopf. Katie began her work career at Dorney Park during her 9th-grade year as a seasonal employee and has advanced through the years to full-time management positions. Katie stresses the importance for young employees t...

Damon West, author of "The Coffee Bean," shares his inspiring journey from a 9th grader wanting to make varsity football in Texas to eventually serving a life sentence in a Texas prison and his ultimate transformation into a keynote speaker, best-selling author, philanthropist, college professor, and servant leader. West reflects on his ninth-grade experience, highlighting the pressures...

In this episode we continue the 9th Grade Experience Through the Decades series in collaboration with the Emmaus Historical Society. Our second episode welcomes Ruth Kemmerer, a graduate of Emmaus High School from the class of 1949, whose freshman year dates back to the 1945-1946 school year. Listeners can expect to hear about the unique challenges, memorable moments, and the overall atmosphere of...

One of the fastest growing sports in the Lehigh Valley over the past few seasons has been girls wrestling. Emmaus High School becomes the latest school to add a a team in what the NCAA calls an Emerging Sport as it begins the 2023-2024 campaign. For freshman Petra Perez and Kadence Yannotti it has been a steep learning curve to a brand new sport. Hear about their reasons for joining, what they hav...

As we approach the Thanksgiving holiday, it's a great time to look back and reflect on the many positives in our lives for the fifth annual Attitude of Gratitude special episode. Over 60 members of the Emmaus High School community took time during this busy period of the school year to share a little bit about what makes them #EastPennProud and thankful.    So before you fill your plate with f...

As we prepare to enter the holiday season, our focus in this week’s episode is on three main topics: Remembrance, Gratitude, and Advocacy. Remembrance At the beginning of the episode, we take time to remember Emmaus High School junior Edwin Cortes, who was killed in a car accident on October 31. Edwin was a student in my 9th grade science class in 2021 and I shared some thoughts about him and how...

“I remember when …” In our modern, technology-driven school world, adults will often get caught up saying that things were much better and different when they were back in school.  But for Dorris Schaffer, she truly means.  The 99-year old Emmaus resident was a freshman at Emmaus High School during the 1938-1939 school year. There was no fancy technology - just papers, books, and pencils. She sele...

On this episode, we focus on the re-emergence of the Emmaus High School Freshman Mentoring Program. The goal of the group is to establish a sense of community by having upperclassmen mentors meet with and guide the freshmen during monthly meetings. They will have an opportunity to learn about how to become a successful high school student from their upperclassmen peers. Listen as the the mentors,...

It's hard to believe but summer is quickly coming to an end! As you gather up your materials, finish up your last-minute summer must-dos, and attempt to find the charger for your Chromebook, tune into this episode that features students handing out practical, bite-sized information on how to best slay your 9th grade year. We asked students during the 2022-2023 school, ranging from 9th grade ye...

It has taken over 100 episodes, but finally the tables have turned on me on my own podcast! Usually I am the one asking students, educators, and others about their time in the first year of high school, but on this episode, Emmaus High School student Connor Miller had the opportunity to ask me what it was like to be a 9th grader at Holy Ghost Prep in Bensalem, Pa., back in the 1990s. We did this i...

It seems the dream for so many high schoolers today is to become social media famous. With over 30 million videos posted daily to TikTok, the odds of more than just your friends seeing your latest creation is fairly slim. But what happens when a post beats the algorithm odds and breaks through? In February 2023, the members of the band visionblur had their viral moment as their cover of Nirvana&#3...

In this special episode recorded live from the Pennsylvania Convention Center at the end of June 2023, we sat down with 37 attendees of the 2023 ISTE Conference, including educators, industry experts, and students, to gather their best tech tips, time management hacks and other strategies to assist with a successful 9th grade experience. The guests on today's episode come from diverse perspect...

It has been almost six months since his last appearance, so we could not close out the 2022-2023 school year without having Cole Stuchko appear one more time on the podcast to reflect on his 9th grade campaign. Cole has been busy since December finishing up the basketball season, taking midterm exams, trying out and making the varsity tennis team and completing the year with final exam preparation...

Rosemary Lamparella, the current S.T.E.P. teacher at Emmaus High School, sees in her daily work the importance of helping students adapt, grow, and change to build the skills necessary to become members of a school and local community. Even though May was Mental Health Awareness Month, she knows the social and emotional challenges high school students face can present throughout the year, even as...

As the Executive Director of the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center, Ashley Coleman is one of the lead advocates and activists for the LGBTQ+ community in the Lehigh Valley. But the work that has taken her all over the United States began as a member of the Emmaus High School graduating class of 2003. As one of the only black and openly gay members of her class, Coleman didn’t have the option...

In the first of our senior rewind episodes, we catch up with Emmaus High School basketball players Dylan Darville and Chase Muckey, two guests from one of our most popular episodes (Season 2, Episode 16). In February 2020, Darville and Muckey were members of a freshman team that finished with a 25-1 record and promise to restore Emmaus Boys Basketball tradition. Through many ups and downs, their h...

For the first time since 2020, the EHS World Language Department hosted the EPSD International Fair on Saturday, February 25, 2023. A celebration of culture, food, music, and traditions, this event highlighted many of the unique backgrounds of EHS students and community members in a celebration of our school's diverse population.   In this episode, we talked to the students that created prese...

Chris Singleton’s personal story has a 9th grade year that isn’t much different than your typical student. He wanted to play varsity sports, found an interest in books, got a low grade in a class for the first time, and had a first relationship. The years that followed sent Chris on many different paths, eventually winding up at Kalahari Resorts on February 14, 2023, to give a Keynote speech at th...

This episode is a wrap-up for the 9th Grade Experience Podcast’s appearance at the Pennsylvania Education Technology Expo and Conference (PETE&C) Kalahari Resorts in Pocono Mountain, Pennsylvania, on Monday, February 13, 2023. This is the third time the podcast has been invited to present at the conference. The conversation featured on this episode were taken from the session titled “Taking th...

Midterms exams can be a stressful time for students. For all Emmaus High School students except for seniors, this year will be the first time they have taken a traditional middle of the year assessment while in high school.    In this episode, we hope to ease that anxiety with helpful tips and strategies to overcome the challenge. First, we hear from school counselor Mrs. Demchak about t...

It took until the first snow day of the 2022-2023 school year on December 15, 2022, but we are finally back with the latest edition of the Cole Cast, featuring Cole Stuchko.  It has been several months since we last spoke and a lot has happened during that time. Topics we covered in the episode include the need to stay on top of classwork as the academic rigor increases, how to work back when...