Mrs. Janine Murdock is the finance secretary at Springville Junior High.  Mrs. Murdock’s job is to handle the school’s finances and to find substitutes for the teachers.  Mrs. Murdock’s busiest days are getting 900 students registered for school in the fall and collecting end of year fines in May so everyone can get their yearbooks.  Mrs. Brenda Bales, the attendance secretary at SJHS, said another way Mrs. Murdock helps the school is, “She’s a great friend to all the teachers, new and old.”

Mrs. Lise Carpenter has taught science at Springville Junior High School for the last 14 years.  Before she started teaching at SJHS she taught high school for four years in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  Mrs. Carpenter said, “There are many things I like about SJHS. I like the students and teachers, I love how the school is always clean and bright, and I like the motivational posters on the walls. I think there is a good energy in our school which helps all of us to succeed.”

The first wish granted by the Make-A-Wish Foundation was for Christopher James Greicius in Arizona.  Since that time, Make-A-Wish has grown to become a non-profit organization that has granted wishes all over the world.  Springville Junior High students have helped grant the wish of Jessenia, a seven-year-old girl who has ALL leukemia.  Jessenia wishes to go to Disneyworld and meet all the Disney princesses.

The annual Make-a-Wish Carnival was held at Springville High School on Monday, November 9 from 6 to 8:30. This carnival helped raise money to make Jessenia’s wish come true. Jessenia has ALL Leukemia, and her wish is to go to Disneyworld and meet all of the Disney princesses. 

The first school newspaper was a big hit around the school. But many students school-wide do not know the hard work and dedication it took to write all of the articles and publish it into a newspaper. Read on to learn about the process it took to make the newspaper.

“We had to wait almost the entire first term before we had enough articles to publish into a newspaper,” said Max Schreiner, a journalism student at SJHS. The process of making a single article takes about a week. It starts with journalism students picking an article topic, then they brainstorm ideas for your article like who can be interviewed and what you need to know.

When most students think of English, they think of reading books, writing essays, and doing reports. However, in Ms. Rachel Neeley’s class, poetry is their focus right now.

“I love poetry; it’s like the artistic side to English,” Celeborn Stringham, a seventh grade student in Ms. Neeley’s class, explained.

“I love teaching poetry.” Ms. Neeley explained, “It allows students to be creative, poetry is also lots of fun because it’s a very different type of writing. I hope that students learn how to use figurative language effectively in their writing. I also hope that students gain an appreciation for poetry.”

Imagine if you went to a concert or play, but you couldn’t see or hear the performers.  The lights and sounds crew’s job at SJHS is to make sure this does not happen.  They are in charge of all the lights and sounds in plays, concerts and assemblies.   The seven students on the crew are directed by Mr. Shawn Hatfield, a biology teacher at SJHS.

Fridays at Springville Junior High are always fun because Friday is the day we spin the wheel at lunch. For most students, Friday is the day they get their awesome prizes such as iPods, chips, fifteen and five dollar gift cards to Wal-Mart, Yuda Bands, one dollar bills, and coming soon, Krispy Kreme Doughnut gift cards.

Mrs. Elizabeth Bass’s ninth-grade English class is taking a step back in time to the late fifteen hundreds, to the time when Shakespeare was the writer of the century. 

“We’re starting a unit on the play, 'Romeo and Juliet.'” Mrs. Bass explained, “Typically all ninth-grade English teachers explore this play; I think it’s fun to study because there are lots of things that students can relate to.”   

“It’s fun to learn about this kind of stuff, and about Shakespeare’s life,” Madeline Alishbah, a ninth grade student said. 

Mrs. Marthea Jackson is a math teacher at Springville Junior High, as well as a friend to her fellow faculty members and the students she has taught in the past.

Mrs. Jackson started her teaching career at Springville Junior High fourteen years ago and has loved every minute of teaching. “I love how everyday is different; the experiences we have everyday in class, watching a kid be so happy that they did well on a math test when they didn’t think they would.”

Mrs. Jackson never thought she would be a math teacher until she got into college. “I took a class about education, and both my parents were teachers. I got hooked.”