Musicals, some people like them, some don’t. In Mrs. Breakwell’s English class the students recently watched a famous musical, West Side Story. Mrs. Breakwell found very positive response from her classes.

Ninth graders in Mrs. Breakwell’s class were learning about Romeo and Juliet. Mrs. Breakwell knew about the musical West Side Story and how it ties into Romeo and Juliet, so she decided to let the students watch it. “Because the eighth grade will be reading it next year I decided to play it for them too,” said Mrs. Breakwell.

Everyone knows of Mr. Cudney’s toilet seat hall pass. But no one really knows where it came from or why he has it. Mr. Cudney, the art teacher here at SJHS, said, “I got the idea from an old gas station bathroom key holder. I thought it was kind of funny and that it was a good idea for a hall pass.”  Students say that it is very awkward and gross to carry it around; well that was the main point. Sarah Cheney, an eighth grader at SJHS, said, “I never used the hall pass, I thought it was awkward to carry around and extremely disgusting.”

tudents in the Service Learning class are out to help the planet.  Mrs. Diane Bird, Service Learning teacher, said, “We didn’t really start it. It was more of the community.” The recycling program was started a couple years ago by the city; they helped start the program by putting out giant dumpsters for paper, plastic, and glass.

“Reading is the process of constructing meaning,” said Mrs. Mary Rice, an English teacher at SJHS.  Oftentimes, students feel they are able to get more meaning out of a book when they are able to read books within a group. This is one reason why Mrs. Rice’s ninth grade English classes are reading Dracula and Ivanhoe in groups.  The classes have studied the basic themes of both books, and will soon be splitting in to two groups, (with one group reading Dracula, and another reading Ivanhoe).  Although the students are only picking one book to finish with the class, many of them are going to finish the other book on their own.

At Springville Junior High, students are having fun in cooking.  At the beginning of the term students got into small groups. After they are in their groups the whole class gets assigned something to cook. Then while they are in their groups they work together to cook it. According to Mrs. Natalie Luke, foods teacher at SJHS, foods is a really fun and exciting class where students can express themselves as they are cooking.

Three students in Springville Junior High’s service learning class have found a way to turn fundraising into a competition. Ninth-grade students Savannah Bowers, Jehni McNeil, and Bianca Caraveo have started a project to help raise money for the Central Bank Angel Tree, which will help families in need during the holiday season. At lunch, the servicing learning students set up a table with a jar for each grade. Each penny that students donate will count as a point for their grade. Nickels, dimes, quarters, and bills of any quantity may be placed in opposing grade’s jars as negative points. Whichever grade has the most points on Thursday, December 16th wins a movie party in the auditorium.

Model United Nations team has been a tradition at SJHS for many years. It is supervised by Mr. David Hansen, history teacher at SJHS, and Mrs. Lise Carpenter, science teacher at SJHS. In Model UN, the students represent a country and practice parliamentary procedures to find solutions to certain world issues. Model UN practices every Monday and Friday during Quest Time.

During the month of December, geometry students at Springville Junior High memorized formulas and got into the Christmas spirit by singing carols. These weren’t just the ordinary Christmas carols you hear on the radio. Before Christmas break, Mrs. Gleave, Algebra 1 and Geometry teacher, had geometry students create math Christmas songs.

Mrs. Gleave has had her classes carol for the past four years now.  Before that, she researched on the benefits of music in memorization. Mrs. Gleave decided inventing Christmas carols for math formulas and theorems would help students remember them better. And so the tradition was born. 

The first day of school started, and so did the journalism class, which is taught by Ms. Tiffanie Miley during sixth period.  They started to work on their first articles about a week in, after practicing to become the new journalism staff. Now it’s January and the journalism staff is about to leave and join new classes next semester.  “It's really sad to me. This is my second and final year as a journalist, and I've really enjoyed the class and the teacher,” said Cody Woolsey, ninth-grade student at SJHS.  After January 13th, most of the journalism students will not be taking the journalism class the next semester.  “I really enjoyed teaching this semester's journalism class.

As Christmas Break approached, students and teachers alike found ways to spread the Christmas spirit throughout Springville Junior High School. Mrs. Brenda Bales, school attendance secretary, found her own way to celebrate the holidays: she has decorated the office!

As soon as Thanksgiving break ended, Mrs. Bales and her teacher assistants (TA’s) quickly started putting up decorations around the office. Some of the decorations were: two decorative snowmen, a Christmas tree, and various snowflakes around the room. Mrs. Bales said, “The tree here was finished before my tree at home.”