Two Wii’s, a pool table, a ping pong table, and foosball. What else could you ask for during Quest Time?  Four days a week, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, all during quest time, the counselors host a game room in room 14.  Students at Springville Junior High School race to the counselors’ game room as soon as they hear the bell ending third period.  Mrs. Distefano, one of the counselors, said, “We just wanted to provide something fun to do for the kids.”

Students are running to sign up for track at Springville Junior High School.  On March third, a meeting was called for all those interested in track.  The room buzzed with excitement as the coaches for this year’s track team patiently told SJHS runners all the details.  Practices started March eleventh, and meets started soon after, on March twenty ninth.  Track is a sport where kids get together and run for fun.  Some of the events include the one hundred meter dash, the long jump and so much more.  Julie Sumsion, an eighth grader in track, said, “Track is a great experience.  It’s a great place to meet and make new friends.”  Ms.

Front, left to right: Danny Salazar, Bailey Bird, and Kenya Rodriguez.  Back, left to right: Kelsie Taylor, Reagan Park, Chase Kimball, Josh Clegg, Andrew Hoffman, Noah Andelin, Ciarra Snapp, and Quinn Gleave.

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Have you ever heard of adults and students playing together in an orchestra concert? Well the Springville Junior High ninth-grade orchestra did! They got the opportunity to play with the BYU New Horizons orchestra on March 28 at Springville High School. The BYU New Horizons Orchestra is a group that provides opportunities for adults to learn to play an orchestral stringed instrument. Dr. Tsugawa, the orchestra director at SJHS, said “This concert was the sixth annual Intergenerational Concert between the SJHS orchestra program and the BYU New Horizons Orchestra.” Most of the orchestra students were excited to play with people that are not the same as them!

On Thursday, March 21st, the ninth-grade band from Springville Junior High went to perform in front of Diamond Fork Junior High, Spanish Fork Junior High, Payson Junior High, Mt. Nebo Junior High, Mapleton Junior High, and Salem Hill Junior High!  They went to Maple Mountain High School and played the following songs: Infinite Horizons, Appalachian Air, and Southern Folk Rhapsody.  Each band was judged after they finished their songs, and received a score between one and five; one being the highest, and five being the lowest.  The judges also ran a short clinic after the performances where they would comment on what they thought the band did well in, and what they could work on as a group.

In June of 2011 Google announced the Chromebook, a cheap, inexpensive laptop, designed for daily use in products like Google Drive.  In order to see whether or not this new technology could be helpful in our school, the journalism class is testing out a small Chromebook lab this semester.  Like Microsoft Office, Google Drive allows you to create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, but it all works online. This allows you to access your documents from any computer at anytime. Google Drive is just one example of the things the Chromebook does. 

Who says boys and girls can’t compete for service? Certainly not Springville Junior High. From March 18 through the 22, SJHS had R.A.S.K. (Random Acts of Selfless Kindness) Week.  Throughout the school, every student had the opportunity to dress up and perform the service act of the day. Roxie Chambers, one of the ninth grade girls in charge of the week, said, “The purpose of R.A.S.K. week was to get others excited about service.” Along with dressing up, the students could answer trivia questions and participate in a service scavenger hunt to be entered into a drawing at the end of the week. Mrs.

Starting on March 26th, the sixth graders from all over Springville came to explore the next stage in their education: Springville Junior High. According to the seventh-grade English teachers and the counselors, the future seventh graders are coming to get to know the teachers, the classes, and also just to get familiar with the school. To help the sixth graders on their journey through their first year of junior high, the current  seventh graders recently made survival guides using knowledge from the experiences they’ve had  this year. 

As Springville Junior High’s third term neared an end, Mrs. Caras’s ninth-grade science classes were hard at work in the computer labs.  From March 10th to March 12th, her students had a chance to make their own Google Presentation about an ocean animal of their choice.  A Google Presentation is basically Google’s version of Microsoft PowerPoint, but it is stored in a student’s email, which means it can be worked on from any computer with internet access.  According to Eduardo Garcia, a ninth grader at SJHS, the presentations needed to include a description of their animal, where it normally lives, what it eats, and much more.  According to Mrs.

Students in eighth-grade English classes at Springville Junior High started to read the book Schooled around mid-March. Last year an eighth-grade English teacher suggested the book for eighth graders, and now its a part of the eighth-grade English classes at SJHS! “Schooled is a fun, engaging book that teaches students about tolerance and being themselves,” said Mrs. Bass, an eighth-grade English teacher at SJHS.