Every year at Springville Junior High there is always a very special concert, The Winter Choir Concert.  This year the Winter Choir Concert will be held on January 14th.  It is a prestigious honor for the choir students to be in. They have been practicing since the beginning of the year to bring students and staff members a rich and life filled-concert with a variety of musical styles and well known songs.

“The Winter Concert has a lot of variety in the types of songs we sing. I think people coming to see it will enjoy the different styles of music that we sing,” said Mrs. Leslie Walker, choir teacher at Springville Junior High.

In the world today, we are faced with many different challenges and problems that weren’t in the world a hundred years ago, or weren’t as threatening. One of these many dangers is drugs. “I think most people in the world today are affected by drugs, even if it’s not directly,” Mr. Ryan Chambers, the health teacher at Springville Junior High explained. “Even family members participating in drug use can affect a person’s life.”

In health, students are required to learn about the dangers of drugs and ways they can refuse them. Mr. Chamber’s health classes, just recently finished their unit on learning about drugs and the dangerous threat they can be to a persons life.

At Springville Junior High, Mrs. Koriane Maughan has come up with something called Friday Incentive.  The incentive occurs every Friday.  For twenty minutes of the period an activity takes place.  The activity is a surprise.

Students earn the activity by accomplishing the task Mrs. Maughan writes on the board every Monday.  If the task is not accomplished the students who did not complete it have to do something else while the other students get to take part in the activity.

January 20th is the first concert of the year for Springville Junior High’s eighth and ninth grade orchestras. They will play many different songs. Alex Hawker, a seventh grader in the eighth-grade orchestra, said, “We will play six songs, and one we learned it without any music!” Dr. Tsugawa is the director of these orchestras. Students in his eighth-grade orchestra think he is funny. According to Yamina Castro, Dr. Tsugawa teaches music concepts well and jokes with them.

In orchestra, the students learn many songs and do music theory. Dr. Tsugawa helps them with everything they do. Alex Hawker said, “Dr. Tsugawa is nice and funny. He makes learning theory fun and exciting.”

Springville Junior High students are excited for the new semester, but most kids are really going to miss a few of their classes. According to Maddie Joyner, an eighth-grade student, she is going to miss “the friends I won’t get to see as much.”  Another thing most students are going to miss is foods, an elective class.

But there are a lot of classes students are very excited for. Savannah McNitt, an eighth-grade student, is excited for “photography, because I get to take pictures!”  Maddie said what she’s most exited for is “foods because you get to eat your work!”

Every Christmas morning, little kids and others who wish they were little kids, wake up early to rush downstairs to see what presents are peeking out from under the Christmas tree.  They tear the wrapping paper off as fast as they can, after all, who cares about the wrapping paper, right?  This would describe everyone who completely loves Christmas and can’t wait to see what they received.  Coming back to school after the Christmas break is when many students compare what they got and what their friends got.  Every year there are certain items that it seems everyone has received for Christmas. 

This week is the last week that journalism will be available this school year. Students have enjoyed writing about different events from around the school. From student and teacher spotlights to school-wide happenings, the journalism students have covered nearly everything.

Ms.Tiffanie Miley has taught journalism this year. Ms. Miley enjoyed teaching the class and described her Journalism students as a group of great writers who are motivated to do good work. “I've been really impressed with what my journalism students have written this year--both in quantity and quality,” said Ms. Miley. The journalism students have done so well that Ms. Miley cannot think of a way that the students can improve in their writing.

Over the past few weeks, students in Mrs. Mary Rice’s honors English class have been working hard to create there very own renditions of a “Faustian Bargain.”

In the story Dr. Faustus a very intelligent scholar sells his soul to the devil and in return, the devil grants the man his every wish for a number of years. The students in Mrs. Rice’s class have been making their own versions of this exchange. They are making up stories that involve a character giving up something of long term importance for something of immediate gain. The ideas the students have come up with ideas that vary from a jungle scene to an ocean scene, and they involve all different kinds of characters such as lions, fish, and llamas.

With every school there is a principal behind it, one who runs the fundraisers, does the school assemblies, supervises students, and encourages staff members.  The principal behind Springville Junior High is Mr. Darrel Rolfe.

Dr. Sam Tsugawa conducts the Springville High School folk ensemble, which meets every Thursday after school.  This program is mainly for high school students, but two Springville Junior High students are involved. Emily Daybell and Dylan Larsen both play the bass. Anyone in the high school can join. All they have to do is show up. 

Members of the folk ensemble play violins, fiddles, basses, mandolins, and banjos. They play Bluegrass, Irish and Folk music. They use no music and play by ear. Dr. Tsugawa said, “We add on more and more as long as it sounds good.” Dylan said, “I like all the music that we play.”