At Springville Junior High, students are learning how to serve by interacting with first graders. Mrs. Diane Bird’s service learning class visits the first graders at Brookside Elementary every Monday during the service learning class period. This helps the class learn how to serve kids younger than themselves.
On Friday, December 12th, the eighth and ninth-grade choir students and the choir teacher, Mrs. Leslie Walker, went around to different elementary schools and sang Christmas songs.
The junior high choir students sang at Art City, Sage Creek, Brookside, Westside, and Cherry Creek Elementary Schools, but in the middle of the tour they stopped at the mall and had lunch. Josh Dalley, eighth grader at SJHS, said, “I enjoyed it because it was really fun!”
Students in the Springville Junior High sewing and clothing class are now making Haan Crafts. Haan Crafts are a fancy name for different types kits you get to make stuffed animals and/or pillows and blankets. If students are in a sewing or clothing class, they have the opportunity to make these kits.
Students at SJHS had lots of choices on what they wanted to make. “I wanted to make a soccer ball, and they looked fun!” said Ashley Cutler, an eighth grader a SJHS.
At Springville Junior High there are several counselors. The seventh-grade counselor, Mrs. Monica Distefano, was born in Cleveland, Ohio and grew up in a suburb called Sheffield Lake, near Lake Erie.
She went to BYU for a bachelor’s degree in psychology, and later, went to the University of Phoenix to get a master’s degree. She spent 10 years working for a company that provided services to people with disabilities. She was a manager and a director over some residential programs. Later she was the director of staff development.
At the start of chilly December, the students in Mr. Cole Nelson’s eighth-grade history class started a new project, Revolutionary War posters. “The main theme of these posters was Continental Army recruitment in the Revolutionary War,” said Mr. Nelson. After hearing the instructions the students got to work. “When I first heard we were going to make war posters, I thought it would be a great experience,” said Nik Grosland, eighth-grade student at SJHS.
The SJHS Mission statement mentions that the students will be “responsible citizens” to help that happen, Mr. David Hansen’s Government and Law class has set up Peer Court. As the Springville Junior High School Handbook reads, “A Peer Court will be created as part of a Government and law class to give students the opportunity to be involved in addressing and enforcing school policy.”
Intramurals has started off with a bang! Students are playing pickleball, badminton, volleyball, basketball, and even indoor soccer at SJHS. Students come into the boys' or girls' gym on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday from 2:45 PM to 3:45 PM in order to participate in intramurals. All types of teachers host different sports for different days; intramurals are a way to get exercise and make up absences in P.E., jogging, body conditioning, and aerobic conditioning.
“Science Fiction Club is a place for students who have an interest in science fiction to come and share their interests with others,” said Mr. Sam Dahl, science teacher at Springville Junior High School. That’s right, there is a sci-fi Quest Time activity!
The sci-fi class is held every Tuesday during Quest Time in Mr. Dahl’s class room- upstairs in room number 73. In the sci-fi class, students watch sci-fi movies like ‘Contact,’ read science fiction stories, listen to old radio broadcasts like ‘War of the Worlds,’ and even write their own science fiction stories.
The winter months are coming yet again for Springville Junior High, and all over Springville. The leaves are brown and gone, and snow is starting to fall. Many people like winter, and some also very strongly dislike it.
Katie Liddiard, eighth grader, said, “[I don’t like winter because] it makes me stiff, and it hurts.” But Brittney Metler, another eighth grader at SJHS, likes winter a lot because, “Then you can have a snowball fight, make a snowman, go skiing, and my favorite, snowboarding.”
Cells are the basic unit of life. So, in biology, a class during first through third period at SJHS that focuses on living organisms and they way they work, cells are one of the first and most important things students learn about. Unfortunately, many students feel they are also one of the most difficult subjects to learn about. Mr. Shawn Hatfield, the biology teacher at SJHS, has come with several ways students can memorize the complex organelles inside of cells. One of these ways is drawing them.
