Cherry Hill High School West has built an illustrious history in southern New Jersey since its establishment in 1956. It began as Delaware Township High School, the lone Cherry Hill public high school in the greater Camden area. Chapel Avenue’s old reliable building was once just the two-story wings A through D, built originally for industrial arts, administration offices, the fabled old theater, Walsh gym, music room, cafeteria, and then D wing designed as the all-purpose education wing. There was not even a Cherry Hill East until the 1966 school year. For a decade, all Cherry Hill students attended one united high school.
The school has seen a multitude of changes since its founding as Delaware Township High School, most notably its name switch. The building itself has expanded and nearly doubled, with students now observing classes in wings E through H on their schedules. The basketball and volleyball teams now play games in the Jones Gym, with athletic offices and locker rooms located in the surrounding areas. The West vocal groups and theatre department perform at the “new” auditorium, housing 1,005 spectators and featuring an orchestra pit and surrounding vocal workshop classrooms and a backstage area.
Besides physical changes, the school itself has survived through various cultural breakthroughs and events, namely the Vietnam War, which was starting nearly the same time as the school’s founding, the 1969 American moon landing, the entire Cold War, rise of technology and social media, September 11th, and the inauguration of thirteen presidents. Needless to say, the school of “royal purple’s majesty and white crusader’s thrill” has seen various changes over the years, in all facets of the word.
Mr. Scott Sweeten has been through a whirlwind of change in his thirty-four years of science education at West. He has been based in New Jersey through all of his pursuits in education, having taught a year at West Deptford originally after graduating from Rutgers University. He’s a veteran of the science department of Cherry Hill Public Schools, teaching A-level Physics and Planetary Exploration in the current day.
He’s described the change of his teaching style over the years as being a result from younger teachers having more energy, and that energy going away as time passes. “I probably jumped around and made lessons more, you know, frantic because I knew I had to sell,” Sweeten stated, on the topic of the evolution of his career. He further noted, “It’s basically been trying to sell to my students that I enjoy what I do. And then I’m passionate about explaining the cooler stuff in science, especially planetary.” Sweeten enjoys teaching since he “loves explaining things to people.”
Over his long years at West, Sweeten believes that school spirit has definitely waned compared to when he first started teaching. He has an extensive view of the spirit of the school, having once been the coach for the Lions’ swimming team until 2011. Sweeten notes, “I would say that kind of thing has declined because fewer and fewer students are choosing to be involved in extracurriculars.”
Still, the spirit of Cherry Hill West has a lingering presence, from once-student-now-teacher Mr. Cooper Gorelick, who observed the class of 2024 participating in nearly every activity the school offered and bringing back a sense of Lion Pride that is not typically seen much anymore. Gorelick believes that “it’s harder to get a wider swath of students involved. It seems like some of the students that we have are involved in everything…But, it just seems like it’s harder to get students, you know, engaged in what we’re doing.”
Gorelick, once a four-year student at West, now serves as the school’s premier broadcasting and film teacher, as well as a major technician for the technical side of West’s theatre program. Gorelick, until this school year, was also an English teacher. He feels one of the strangest changes from being a student to working behind the scenes at his alma mater is that he still does not enjoy calling his former teachers by their first names. “There were a couple people,” Gorelick recalled, “that I was like, I do not want to call you by your first name because that’s I’m just not there yet.” He referred specifically to fellow teacher Mrs. Howard, and former West administrator Ms. Roskoph.
He also feels a difference from his time as a Lion to an educator is the evolution of colloquialism, or lingo, especially in the new age of technology. “When I was a freshman,” Gorelick stated, “people had cell phones, but texting was sort of just on the rise. Smartphones started to come out by the time I was, like, leaving high school. So, like, people had ‘LOL’, they had ‘JK’. They didn’t have the 8,000 different little [phrases].” Nowadays, new slang comes and goes, such as the incorporation of terms like “gas”, “cap”, or “bet”, language is rapidly changing just as Internet trends do. It is a lot to keep up with, just as Gorelick claims there are so many little phrases now, showcasing how if you might miss a step in new language, you will be left behind.
Both Sweeten and Gorelick, despite the differences in their overall teaching career timelines, agree that the educational aspect of the school has changed drastically. Sweeten’s experiences differ slightly, due to his vocation of scientific discovery and information, and the changes in such science over time. In Planetary Exploration A, Sweeten decided to put his normal teaching on hold to offer an SEL break in the wake of Hurricane Milton and Helene, and the number of anti-climate change advocates in the nation. “I took that climate science break,” Sweeten started, “and touched on, you know, the psychology and the issues of denying that it’s real. So I think it’s more important than ever, but, unfortunately, it’s been harder and harder for students to take it because we’ve required more, especially in science that has bumped out those important issue-related electives.”
The required class makeup has changed to now involve the biology-chemistry-physics trio from freshman to junior year, and the lack of another required science class has brought a decrease in “issue-related courses,” such as environmental studies. Sweeten, himself, once taught Environmental Studies A, which used to have up to eight sections in a year, but the enrollment would dwindle due to the change in class requirements. He believes this is quite unfortunate, due to the number of climate deniers and Flat Earthers in the world.
Sweeten also has noted a large, growing polarization in students involving political issues over time. “I would say there’s definitely more of a trend now that I at least when I was younger,” Sweeten explains, on the subject of intense polarization, “I didn’t notice it, but I don’t think it was there to see that people like to cultivate or foster anger, hate, and fear to make people think they’ve gotta be on their team, you know, whether it’s politically or socially. I think that’s a shame because it definitely makes it very difficult for us as teachers to get you guys to work together, because it’s only increased preconceptions and prejudices.”
Sweeten believes such polarization in both the world and in the schools has made it hard for students, and people in general, to get along accordingly. Each student now might seem like they need to accept a certain ideal or way of life, which might disagree with another’s ideas, and this can demolish possibilities of co-op learning.
Such polarization has also made its way into Gorelick’s classrooms through how world events have changed English teaching. Gorelick looks directly to controversial books, namely the infamous 1955 play Inherit the Wind. The story is based upon a fictionalized account of the “Scopes trial,” where Tennessee teacher John Scopes was prosecuted for teaching evolution in his class. Generally speaking, the play is described by Gorelick as pitting science versus religion. He states, “the play sort of shows how they sort of exist in harmony.” Yet, he claims the rise of anti-climate speakers and overall anti-science notions in the world contributed to a “loud, vocal, angry” group growing in the nation, now deeming the play more controversial than it was twenty years ago. Similar works of fiction have also become debatable, over other various topics like sex, racism, and gender. “There was no question of, like, ‘hey, I don’t want my student reading this because it’s controversial,’” Gorelick claimed. “When I was here, it was, ‘no, you’re gonna read that because it’s an important piece of literature.’”
The controversy over certain works of literature has forced teachers and students to talk about such works for the wrong reasons. “Students are interested in [these works] for a different reason,” Gorelick stated. “[Inherit the Wind] is a really well written play, and people should be looking at it because it’s a well-written play, but they’re looking at it because, ‘oh, it deals with something that has become more relevant now.’ It shouldn’t be more relevant, but it is.”
The evolution of schoolwork in classes at West has also changed. Gorelick claims that the “stamina for assignments has dropped.” He recalled a time at West where seniors were required to produce a long, eight to ten page research paper, as well as English classes giving a harsher deadline on reading books. Gorelick also sees a definite change in students losing the love for reading. His blame lands mainly onto standardized testing. Gorelick believes,“There is a focus now… [on] students who are not doing well on standardized tests with informational, nonfiction reading. So they ram it down their throats, and then students don’t really like it, and it turns them off of reading for a lifetime.” He finds a relationship between the increase of “teaching for the test” and genuine drive to learn being that students are now realizing that they hate the subject they are learning, the complete opposite of the goal of school.
He pointed out an example of students who produced great essays for his class, and he knew they wrote well. “They took the standardized testing, and it came back that they were terrible writers,” Gorelick scoffed. “I was like, this is wrong. This is verifiably wrong, because they do well for me, and they’re not doing well in the standardized test. It’s like, that’s a flawed test. I know I’m not the world’s best teacher, I never will be, but I knew there were certain students, I was like, ‘You’re borderline A, Honors, you should like- you’re a good writer!’”
Sweeten sees it a different way, believing the rise and advancement of technology and having gone virtual over COVID has led to such changes in schoolwork effort. Sweeten explains that phones “definitely trigger the same parts of the brain, with their colors and their immediate feedback, that things like heroin and cocaine do.” He believes the isolation and virtual school aspect of COVID worsened such an addiction. The new addicted generation has caused him to change his teaching methods to include more videos and audio-visual learning. “Nowadays, because of TikTok,” he stated, “I found myself packaging things in 3 or 4 minute spurts, you know? And you could see I’m [now] with the 8 foot screen and high-def videos: If you can’t beat them, join them.”
Overall, Cherry Hill West has undergone a vast series of drastic changes exemplified through its students, their changing attitudes and efforts. It is a sure thing that technological advancements as well as developments in world events and politics have left a strong mark on the school in Cherry Hill. Despite notable changes by longtime teachers, there is still a bright future ahead for the building, as it continues to adapt to the ever-changing world and will continue to be a step on the stairs of life for many young scholars.