Kocher English Blog

The Veteran's History project was a new and interesting experience for me. When Veteran's Day came around, we were assigned a  veteran that was  attending the assembly at the school. I was  partnered  with my fellow classmates, Aubrey T ennant  and Ethan Brown. Our veteran was Timothy E. Stanley and he was in the United States Air Force.  His enlisted career in the air force lasted four years and one year in the international guard .  He wanted to be in the military but he felt the air force was the safest place to be where he could work on planes and get a career and not get out and not have a job that he wasn’t going to keep doing. He currently still works in the  air- line  industry.   Training was difficult he described.  He went to  Blacklan  Air Force Base in San Antonio Texas, that’s where basic training was . Basic training in air force from what he has heard is a lot easier than other types of basic training. By t...

At the beginning of the school year, I set academic, personal, and athletic goals for myself. On an academic level, I wanted to be on honor roll and be a scholar-athlete for each season I was eligible for. My goals as an athlete are pretty similar to my academic goals because I wanted to be a scholar-athlete. Also, I wanted to be nominated or picked as Athlete of The Week for two out of the three seasons. A personal goal I set for myself at the beginning of the year was to improve my communication skills as well as know what I want to do when I attend to Canisius College in the fall. By this time of the year, I've basically met all of my goals. I received the scholar-athlete honor for every season with an honorable mention in the Buffalo News in basketball and volleyball. I also achieved the other part of my academic goal because I made honor roll every semester by two or three points. My personal goals have been reached on the fact that I know what I want to study when I attend Ca...

So freshman orientation came around, I felt lost and knew no one. The, my sister introduced me to  Cookie Altieri. Yeah, Cookie was one of my  first friends at Alden.  On my first day of freshman year, I had to come in early with my sister for the senior breakfast. So, imagine me, in an ugly outfit, that I probably thought was great, surrounded by the graduating senior class. I can still feel the awkwardness to this day. The, when the bell rang, I had to go to Mrs. Nelson's algebra class. Basically, I had a traumatizing first day of freshman year. Since I was coming from St. John's, I really didn't know anyone besides my classmates that  gradua ted  with me at St. John's. As my high school years continued on, it quickly came to my senior year. MY favorite memory was in volleyball when my team won the sectional title against East Aurora and got the chance to compete in the regional championship in Syracuse. Then, back to my sophomore year, my softball season wa...

In my sixth through  eighth  grade years, I was at St. John's. I was one out of twenty-one in my   class and my class was considered one of the biggest classes to go through the school. The most I can remember from St. John's was from my  eighth  grade year. My basketball team was league champs three years in a row. If you go in the St. John's gym, there will be three blue  banners from those years and one of them even has the names of all of the girls on it. People may think private schools are very strict, but my classmates and I actually had a lot of fun. We played games in lunch like spoons and of course it got heated every single time we played. Then, when Christmas came, so did the dreadful  Ch ristmas  plays. We participated in one every year from Kindergarten until our eighth grade year, but I remember despising these the most in my middle school years. They were absolutely terrible,. The only good thing about them was, that we got out of ...

When I started my education, I skipped pre-school, but that wasn't really my choice. I went straight to Kindergarten at St. John's with the best teacher ever, Mrs. Manley. I can’t remember much , but I will try. I started early in sports, but just in basketball where there was a Catholic school K-2 league. There was an A-team and a B-team. I can’t remember if there was a difference in skill level or not, but I doubt it. The league was started by my dad and my older sister, where many small Catholic schools split into two divisions then whoever was first out of those two divisions, got to compete in the championship for the league title and received little bobble-head, gold trophies. I was on the A-team with Christian Snell and Chris Anstett. Even though there wasn't a distinction in skill level between the two teams, the A-team was definitely better and everyone knew it. The best moment of each season was when the B-team scrimmaged the A-team. It was fun, but also competiti...