We all know that SJHS has a new art teacher. But not many of us know that much about her!  Hopefully, after you are finished reading you will pass her in the hallway and instead of thinking, “That’s the new art teacher,” you will think, “There goes Mrs. Wallace, who was the oldest of seven kids and the badminton champion of her junior high.”       

Lara Wallace was born in Arizona and moved to Orem, Utah when she was four years old. Growing up, her favorite pastimes  were dancing, art (of course), and music. “My dad had a radio station at our house,” said Mrs. Wallace. “He was a DJ and we'd play music on it together.”       

 Future Farmers of America, FFA is a class where students get to learn all about animal, plant and food science.They get to go on really cool field trips. They get to go to dairy farms, Snow College, a turkey processing plant, and the Utah State Fair.If you love animals and want to grow up and work with animals FFA is a great place to start. You learn all about agriculture. You get to see where the food you eat comes from.        

Alexa Whitlock, a girl in FFA, says her favorite part of FFA is “raising my piggy.” If you want to raise an animal but not wake up early raise a pig. You can feed your pig after school.        

There are so many talented kids in this school.  Whether you are good at the violin, the saxophone, or drawing, you have an amazing talent.  One talent that many students at SJHS have is singing.  A few students that excel in singing have been spotlighted for their beautiful ability.       

 At SJHS, one of our office secretaries, Mrs. Bales, has been working here for 18 years! She works very hard and has to remember every single student’s name. Mrs. Bales said she can remember nearly everyone’s names, but sometimes she mixes up siblings. We have about 945 kids here, so that is a lot of names to remember. Shayra Riches, an eighth grade student at SJHS said, “She’s really nice and very willing to help out students.” She really enjoys working here but only plans on staying no more than five more years, probably three. Ms. Bales also loves all of her office TAs.        

Have you ever been to a school dance? If you have not, you could have. On Thursday February 6, SJHS had a Valentine’s Dance. Students went and had fun. The dance started at seven, and ended at nine.During Quest Time students could go into Ms. Murray’s room to help make the posters and other decorations. The school’s gym was decorated according to the theme of Valentine’s Day.        

According to Holly Barlow, an eighth grade student, she thought the dance was fun because she likes to dance. “Beauty and The Beast was my favorite song they played,” Holly said.        

 Whether your whole family has been a die hard Broncos fan for as long as you can remember, or you lived in Seattle for 10 years, this year’s Super Bowl was a big deal.  Many people around the country placed votes or bets on who would win.  Mr. Shields’ eighth grade history class is one of the many groups of people doing that.       

On January 23, Chris Crowe, the author of the book Mississippi Trial 1955, came to Ms. Dunn’s English classroom to visit her ninth graders.        

Ms. Dunn’s ninth grade English class read Crowe’s books Mississippi Trial 1955, and Getting Away With Murder. Both books are about the murder of a 14 year old boy, Emmett Till, that helped ignite the Civil Rights Movement.According to Cortez Nelson, a ninth grade student in Ms. Dunn’s class, Chris Crowe talked about his book Mississippi Trial. Ms. Dunn said he had a powerpoint presentation ready and at the end he “opened it up for questions.”        

Did you know that a class of seventh graders have started their own businesses, right here in school?

At the end of January Mr. Taylor’s CTE class started a new project: making pin-on buttons. The students worked together in groups and got to design their own buttons. Then they went to Mr. Rencher’s CTE class to “sell” the buttons to the kids. According to Mr. Taylor, the purpose of the buttons was, “to give an opportunity to show kids what real-life business is like.”

Do you enjoy basketball? Well, our school has their own boys Freshman basketball team! They have had about 14 home and away games this season. There are thirteen boys total on the team, and Ryan Jenkins is this year’s captain. 

Both the boys and girls basketball teams participated in the regional tournaments. They all enjoy playing basketball, and say tournaments are fun. Charlie Fry, a member of the SJHS freshman team, said, “Our season didn’t go like we wanted, and practices were difficult.” They had a lot of practices and worked very hard. 

Basketball! Here are SJHS we have a girls basketball team. If you have not gone to see them play they are amazing! They recently participated in a region tournament where they represented the SJHS Freshman girls basketball team. Maddy Hargett, an athlete on the girls team, said, “My favorite part of this season was beating Spanish Fork… twice.” These girl have worked very hard this season. 

Alexa Whitlock, another member of the team, said, “My favorite part of practice  is the ones when we don’t have to run suicides.”