Springville Junior High School has a Chinese class. The class is for eighth and ninth graders only. According to Bethany Allen, ninth grader at SJHS, everyday when class starts, the “president” of the class, goes and rings the gong. Everybody bows, then they say, “lao-shi-hao”, which means “good morning teacher” in Chinese. Then everybody sits down. Bethany said, “I like being in the Chinese class because who else can say, ‘I know Chinese’?” Hannah Bray, ninth grader at SJHS, said, “I like the Chinese class because we do lots of cultural stuff, we eat food, and have parties!”
Mrs. Debra Wells, Chinese teacher at SJHS and Springville High, teaches eighth and ninth graders at SJHS, and tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades at Springville High School. During the summer, Mrs. Wells teachers a Chinese immersion camp at BYU. She also teaches a community education class of Chinese to adults one night a week in the fall. According to Mrs. Wells, the public schools were just starting to offer Chinese classes when she decided to re-enter the job market after having to stay home for a few years to raise her family. “Since my skills matched the school’s needs, I became a Chinese teacher! I previously taught Chinese at the Missionary Training Center, back before I was raising children. I have loved teaching Chinese ever since then,” said Mrs. Wells. Even though Mrs. Wells didn’t teach Chinese for a while, she kept up with the language to be better prepared to teach Chinese again.