Have you been to a library? The smell of leather and dusty pages of a book. Well, at Springville Junior High this place is more than a library. Everyday before and after school hours, students are welcome to come to the library. Here students can explore the computers and the thousands of books open to them.
For many years now Springville Junior High School has successfully held a peer court in their government and law class. Soon the class plans to reopen the court system for this year.
According to Mr. David Hansen, the government and law instructor, the class plans to start the court within the next two to three weeks. “We are working on the Constitution and on opening and closing statements. Once we finish with that we plan to open the court.”
Many Springville Junior High students remember the snack shack in the lunch room. Well, this year the snack shacks were closed district-wide by the Food Service Administration.
The Food Service Administration closed the snack shack down because they decided to make a new and healthier lunch line. This lunch line will serve things like apples, oranges, bananas, salad shakers, milk, nachos and breadsticks with marinara sauce. Meals are determined by the district, where they follow the guidelines set out by the Federal Government.
Springville Junior High has been a very lucky school since 1992, because Mr. David Rencher has been a teacher here for eighteen years. He says he enjoys his job of teaching technology classes. No wonder, before he was a teacher, he said he wanted to be an architect and a carpenter, among other things. Mr. Rencher “has a good mind about technology,” according to Oscar Portillo, a former student of Mr. Rencher’s.
Have you ever found it hard to tell someone that you appreciate them? Seventh grade students in Mr. Trent Mikesell’s class at Springville Junior High recently did this by writing character sketches. According to Mr. Mikesell, kids chose someone they admire, usually in their family, and wrote about their “appearance, actions, thoughts and feelings, even their speech.” They typed them in the computer lab. They printed the character sketches out and gave them to the person they wrote about.
Do you remember those essays you had to do when you were in school? Well writing here at Springville Junior High isn’t too hard to find. Especially for those students who would like to have a better understanding and were brave enough to take Honors English.
Honors English here is taught by only one teacher, and that teacher is Mrs. Mary Rice. According to her, in Honors English students have more choices than students in other English classes. Instead of Mrs. Rice choosing what the class will study, it is, “Whatever the students decide to do,” said Mrs. Rice. “Students pick from a reading list and the subject that has the most votes is what they get to work on.”
There are various math teachers at Springville Junior High, one of those teachers is Mr. Dallin Krebs, who other than being here for almost three decades is also very loved by his students, former and present.
“My career goal at a young age was to be a farmer like my dad," said Mr. Krebs. Mr. Krebs was born in North Logan, Utah, where he and his five brothers and two sisters often helped their father with the farming right after school was over for the day. Which of course is where Mr. Krebs got his ambition to become a farmer at a young age, but due to the poor economics of farming he was unable to do that.
Springville Junior High school’s faculty and students are buzzing about the first school newspaper to be released in seven years. The Journalism class worked for weeks to get enough articles to be published into a newspaper. Students’ and teachers’ reactions were astounding!
“It was cool to know what was happening in the school,” said Seth Daybell, an eighth grader at Springville Junior High. When students woke up and groggily made their way to their first period class, they were surprised to hear on the morning announcements that there was going to be a school newspaper released that morning.
Basketball open gym is an after school program were anyone can come in and do some fine tuning on their skills. If students are looking to polish up on their skills or just to play some basketball, open gym is open on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 3:00 pm to 4:30pm. So far, open gym is very popular with, on average, 20 people per day!
“Anyone can come and improve their skills or just come to shoot some hoops.” said Mr. Blakey, counselor at SJHS, and supervisor of open gym. The rules are simple: don’t mess around, play basketball. Easy enough? Sure is. Coming to open gym ensures a good time and good pointers.
The students and teachers at Springville Junior High will recognize the name of Mrs. Brenda Bales, attendance secretary at SJHS. Mrs. Bales’s job is to keep track of attendance at the junior high.
Mrs. Bales has been working at the junior high for 15 years. According to Mrs. Bales, one of her favorite parts of her job is that she is always busy. She also said, “The kids are my favorite.”
Ms. Rachel Neeley, a seventh grade English teacher at SJHS, said, “Mrs. Bales can do a million things at once!” According to Ms. Neeley, Mrs. Bales is an enjoyable person to talk to.
