Haddonfield Memorial High School is no stranger to having students from the German program excel and succeed in language studies.
From earning gold medals in the national German exam to exchange trips to the country, the school district’s program offers a number of ways for students to engage with and benefit from their knowledge of the language.
One of the most recent accomplishments is that of two seniors, Isaiah Cook and Connor Paoli, who received two of the four available scholarships given by the German Society of Pennsylvania this year.
“I was looking at a lot of different, other opportunities for scholarships, and I saw the German Society,” Cook recounted. “It was like, ‘I should give this a shot.’ I didn’t think I had the best chance. But I mean, I guess I did good.”
Paoli applied after hearing about the opportunity while volunteering with the German Society. Scholarships are for one year, and students have to reapply if they want to continue with the program after that. The scholarships are available to students in the Delaware Valley who plan a major or minor in German in college.
Cook got a $5,000 scholarship that he will use to major in music industry and minor in German at Drexel University. Paoli received $7,500 to study German at Georgetown University.
“I’ll have to look at how the credits are,” he acknowledged, “because I want to do multiple majors and minors. But if I can, I’ll try to major in it.”
The German Society of Pennsylvania is an organization that preserves and promotes the German language, culture and heritage, specifically as connected to the Pennsylvania and Delaware Valley areas. Anna Feinleib taught both Paoli and Cook during high school and helped create the school’s relationship with the society.
“So we have a long-established connection, a relationship with the German Society of Philadelphia, and that helps,” she noted. “I go to a lot of webinars. We have some community leaders and foreign students and students who are members.”
Recipients are chosen in a two-step process, first providing a German writing sample, then completing an interview conducted almost entirely in the language.
“Going for an interview, I didn’t really know how to prepare for that, so I mostly had to wing it, but there’s a few basic interview questions you can practice,” Paoli said. “And I went over that with my mom, who speaks German, so I had help in that aspect.”
He and Cook have been learning German for six years since middle school.
“In high school, you have German every day and you have German assignments and stuff,” Paoli explained. “But middle school really wasn’t like that, kind of every other day, or twice a week or something. So you really learned at a much slower pace.”
When Cook and Paoli were in middle school, they chose which language they wanted to learn in fifth grade. The system is now run differently: Students have the entire sixth grade year to explore all offered languages.
Both students plan to use their German skills in the future. Paoli wants to assist in historical studies, specifically with translations from native German writing. Cook plans to go into the music industry in some capacity, using German to make international connections.
“The path I want to go down is the music industry and production,” Cook stated, “maybe even entertainment law … Germany’s also a very big place for entertainment music. And I think it’d be good to have that connection to also know German.”
