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. 

Mr. David Kindrick, eighth grade science teacher at SJHS, is doing a class experiment about chemical reactions. They are studying about how the statue of liberty turned green, how you make nylon, how pancake batter changes to pancakes, and other cool stuff.

Each student in Mr. Kindrick's class is doing something different. Students are using computers to research information on the internet. Jordan Kendall, a student in Mr. Kindrick's class, is learning about how the statue of liberty turned green. Jordan said, “The statue of liberty turned green because the salt, the air, and the outside coat that protects the statue of liberty mixed together which made a chemical reaction that turned it green.”

This year Springville Junior High took 5th place in the Nebo School District tournament.  The team missed 4th place by just a few strokes. The golf tournament was held at Hobble Creek Golf Course, where students form Springville, Mapleton, Payson, Mt. Nebo, Spanish Fork, and Diamond Fork Junior High Schools competed to see who the best was.

The golfers played eighteen holes and the best four scores from each team were totaled to determine the winner. This year Gregg Davis, Allen Maughn, Kyle Englund, Radley Nelson, and Zach Droubay went to the district tournament at Hobble Creek. Gregg Davis said that he and his team did well.

With all the illness in the world today, obesity is a common threat. But not for the girls at Springville Junior High. Every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday girls have the opportunity to meet after school from 2:45-3:45 with their instructor Mrs. Claire Mills.

Mrs. Mills has been teaching for three years at Springville Junior High, not only teaching the girls work out club, but also the special education program at the school. Mrs. Mills said, “I think that we do need this program. It helps promote a healthy life style, it's fun and everyone makes new friends.” Even with the hectic schedule of students day-to-day lives, girls still have the opportunity to relieve their stress and have fun at the same time.

 Service Learning is a class offered at SJHS that allows students to do service within and outside of the school. Once a semester students are required to do some sort of project that helps others. Kaity Hansen, Jehni McNeil, and Jessie Wimmer, all eighth graders, decided to make fleece blankets and donate them.
   
The girls tied about fourteen fleece blankets and donated them to The Dollhouse Boutique, where they were sold and one hundred percent of the profit was then donated to the Children’s Justice Center where children who have been abused can get the help they need.