November 2014

Mr. Bentley is a history and geography teacher at SJHS. He enjoys outdoor sports, especially snow sports, and water skiing. He lives in Lindon with his wife and five children. 

Mr. Bentley has been teaching since 1986, when he started at Box Elder High. “I taught history to sophomores and juniors,” said Mr. Bentley. Mr. Bentley explained, “Growing up I enjoyed helping others with their math and so I decided in high school that I wanted to be a math teacher, which changed to social studies when I started college.” 

There are many electives that students can take here at SJHS. One of those electives is Clothing Exploration. Clothing Exploration is a class where you can sew anything from aprons to bags! Ms.Bird, who is also a CTE teacher, teaches this class. It is a class for one semester and is open for eighth graders and ninth graders. 

Anna Allen, an eighth grader who takes Clothing Exploration, said, “I’ve learned a lot from this class. We have learned about textiles and fabrics so we can be better consumers. I also like how we get to work on our own pace and are always keeping busy.” 

Mrs. Riggs, seventh grade Language Arts, eighth grade English, and Creative Writing teacher, is amongst the new arrivals at SJHS this year. However we, the students of SJHS, do not really know who she is.  

Mrs. Riggs actually started out wanting to be a writer and chose Creative Writing as her major.  “As I got further in my schooling, I realized how important it is for young people to gain a love for reading and writing, so I changed my major to English Education,” she said.

Before she taught at SJHS, Mrs. Riggs was down in the Lone Star State teaching at Scott Johnson Middle School in McKinney, Texas.  She also coached the cross country and girl's basketball team in Texas as well.  

Lunch at SJHS is most students favorite period, even though some students do not like all of the lunches here.

According to Kaden Garcia, a student at SJHS, he does not like all of the food at SJHS, but he likes second lunch better because they have seconds.  A lot of other students, like Carter Shepherd, an eighth grader at SJHS, likes the food here and would eat it outside of school.  “I’ve liked everything I’ve tried here, but my favorite is the orange chicken.”  He also likes second lunch better because he likes to eat lunch later in the day.                

On July 1, 2014, schools nationwide put a policy in place that got rid of all the items in the vending machine that had high sugar, calorie, fat, or caffeine. This got rid of any candy, caffeinated beverage, and soda. 

“The federal government stipulates the type of products we can sell. They reduced the type of fat intake, sugar intake, and caffeine intake to reduce obesity, and diseases like diabetes,” said Mr. Van Ausdal, the principal at Springville Junior High School.

“Vending companies have been told what they can put in there by the school district,” Mr. Van Ausdal said.

The Integrated Science class, taught by Mr. Bass, a new science teacher at SJHS, did an ice cream lab on October 9 at SJHS. It was a reward for positive behavior, according to Mr. Bass. 

The best part was making it, according to Autumn Olsen, an eighth grade student in the class. “It is a chance to have students witness first hand the subject they are learning and do something memorable,” said Mr. Bass. 

The class made vanilla and chocolate ice cream by freezing the melted ice cream with liquid nitrogen. Students were able to experience phase change, expansion, contraction, loud explosions, and other cool physical changes.

There are a lot of new teachers here at Springville Junior High. But there are also plenty of old teachers from the old junior high, one being Ms.Dunn, an English teacher.  Ms. Dunn has been at Springville Junior High for four years. She graduated from BYU with her bachelor’s degree. 

The SJHS Cross Country team has been doing great in their meets so far this fall. The team practices every day. Sometimes they run around the field behind the school and other times they run around surrounding neighborhoods. There are 34 people on the team, 20 boys and 14 girls. “ The girls have won every meet so far this year; the boys have won all but one- they came in second, so we have done really well in our meets so far! We just have the district final left. We’ll see how that goes,” said Mrs. Bodily, the coach of the team.

The cross country team races at our school, Mapleton, Salem, Mt.Nebo, and Payson. “I love running and I have been running my whole life,” said Adam Krieger, a student on the cross country team.

Mrs. Bass, an English teacher at SJHS, has been an English teacher for 13 years, and has been teaching at SJHS for 9 years. 

“My favorite part of teaching is working with kids. I love interacting and helping others explore ideas, find new information, make connections, and share,” said Mrs. Bass. 

“It’s a little ironic why I chose to become an English teacher. I always felt like writing was my weakness. But as I learned how to become a better writer, I feel like I was able to change my story and make writing a strength. If I could figure it out, then why couldn’t I help others figure it out too,” said Mrs. Bass. 

According to Bonnie Cuthill, a lunch worker for SJHS, lunch working is a blast! She said her and the other lunch ladies have a lot of fun in the back in the kitchen. She said she does not get hungry while she is working because she can get a great variety of food during her own lunch break. She lunch works because it is a perfect job for a mom. She leaves when her kids leave to go to school, and when she gets home her kids get home right after her. She never gets bored because  there is always something to be done. Bonnie is in charge of the salad and the potato bar.