“Music has greatly changed my life. I want to give students that same opportunity,” said Ms. Neilson, a student teacher from Brigham Young University. She and many other student teachers at BYU have been teaching in Dr. Sam Tsugawa’s orchestra classes at Springville Junior High.  During first period orchestra class on Tuesday and Thursday, a large group of student teachers and their instructor, Dr. Andrew Dabczynski, come into class tolearn how to teach music classes.  Ms. Neilson is the primary student teacher for Dr. Tsugawa, and helps out in all of his junior high and high school classes.

Seventh graders at Springville Junior High School recently participated in the ice cream shop business activity in CTE (Career Technology Education). The students got to serve ice cream at their “creamery,” called Castle Creamery, themed after our school’s mascot, the knights. The creamery took place on Wednesday, November tenth in Mrs. Linda Woodfield’s seventh-grade CTE class.

According to Mrs. Linda Woodfield, CTE teacher, the purpose of the activity was to teach the kids how to set up a business and the four P’s of marketing: product, place, price, and promotion. According to Landon Simkins, a seventh grader that took part in the creamery, they had the activity to learn how to cook.

Every student at Springville Junior High School in Mr. Greg Shields’s history class knows that they have to think a lot to pass. Likewise, Mr. Shields's Quest Time activity this year is Mind Trap, which, according to Hazel Dore, “Makes you think and is fun and challenging.”

Every once in a while in Mr. Shields’s history class, the students will take a little break from history and play a game. “The students seemed to enjoy this, so I thought it would be a good idea to do it for a Quest Time Enrichment activity,” said Mr. Shields.

There is a new school psychologist at Springville Junior High School. Mr. Nick Baird, the new school psychologist, is from Olympia, Washington. He is the youngest of four brothers and is married and has one daughter.  According to Mr. Baird, he wanted to become a psychologist because he likes counseling and working with adolescents. His favorite part of his job is working with kids and seeing them progress.

Some of the things that Mr. Baird does as a psychologist are: assessing students with learning disabilities, counseling students, creating interventions for students, and working on prevention programs. Mr. Baird’s office is located across from Mr. Mikesell’s room.

So welcome to SJHS Mr. Baird!

What is FFA? The largest youth leadership organization, that’s what! For the first time, Agricultural Science is being offered at Springville Junior High. Agriculture is the production, processing, marketing, and use of foods, and fibers and byproducts from plant crops and animals. Mrs. Monica Giffing teaches Agricultural Science, or FFA, at the junior high and at Springville High School. She has been teaching FFA for five years at the high school, but this is the first year she is teaching FFA at SJHS.

At Springville Junior High School, students had the opportunity to learn and experiment with well-loved milk chocolate. On Monday, November 8, Mr. David Kindrick’s eighth-grade science class made chocolate molds to experiment with the physical properties of matter.

The purpose of this experiment was to help students understand and witness these physical properties. Mr. Kindrick wanted his students to see the changes from solids to liquids to gas. He chose chocolate to work with because it can go through each phase without adding or taking away a large amount of energy. Mr. Kindrick said, “Chocolate is also a tasty treat that you can get to solidify in a timely manner.”

Ever since 1957, Springville Junior High School has celebrated the Christmas season through song. This year, on December first and third of 2010, the SJHS choirs will be carrying on the tradition. 

There are four choirs that will perform in the concert.  The Master Singers (ninth-grade integrated choir), The Journeymen (eighth-grade mens choir), The Apprentice Singers (seventh-grade integrated choir), and The Knightingales, (eight-grade women’s chorus). On December third at 7:30 pm., the Master Singers and Journeymen will put on the “Candle Light” concert, with a special appearance from the Knightingales.

Students at Springville Junior High are participating in a Creative Sewing class. Creative Sewing is an enrichment option for Quest Time. Creative Sewing is a class where students come to work on sewing projects or learn new sewing skills.

Claire Bunnell, eighth grader at SJHS, said, “I think it’s really fun and gives you a break from school.”

Creative Sewing is in the foods room (36) on Mondays and in the sewing room (room 35) on Fridays during Quest Time. Mrs. Luke teaches on Mondays, and Mrs. Bird teaches on Fridays. 

All eighth-grade health classes at Springville Junior High School have been working especially hard this past week because they are designing a theme park. According to Mr. Ryan Chambers, eighth and ninth-grade health teacher at the junior high, the difference between a theme park and an amusement park is that an amusement park has random rides and attractions that don’t tie into anything, and a theme park all has rides and attractions based on a specific idea. In this case, the theme is the digestive system. Mr. Chambers said, “I have the students do this activity so that they can associate things that they are not familiar with, like the digestive system, with something that they are very familiar with like a theme park.

In Mrs. Mary Rice’s eighth-grade English classes, the students have started reading a book called Skeleton Creek. Mrs. Rice, eighth-grade English teacher and ninth-grade Honors English teacher at SJHS, said, “Skeleton Creek is a multi-genre book about a gold mining mystery. Some of the genres featured include: journal, videos, meeting minutes, newspaper articles, emails, graphs and charts.” Mrs. Rice started the books with her classes about the end of October and they will most likely be finish around the 22nd of November.