Football season has ended and the leaves have started to fall, which means one thing, basketball season!  The team is coached by Mr.

This year Mr. Trent Mikesell, seventh-grade English teacher, is also teaching creative writing. In creative writing, one of the many types of writing the students are learning about are parodies. Parodies are basically when you make fun of something. Mr. Mikesell gave the students different things they could write about, and they wanted to write parodies. Mr. Mikesell, said, “Parodies are generally funny, and I wanted the humor.”

Mr. Mikesell, said, “I am excited to see what the students do. We watched several parodies, and read several examples of parodies.”   The students can write about whatever they want. Some people are making fun of celebrities, and some are making fun of fairy tales.

Mrs. Trish Nielson is a  world geography and history teacher at Springville Junior High School. She was born in Houston, Texas and grew up in Kingwood, Texas. She went to an elementary school, and then later a middle school, called Kingwood Middle School. At that school, she was the mascot (which was a cougar) for sporting events. She would wear the cougar costume with pride and would have fun getting the crowd rallied up for the schools’ teams.  When she was older, she attended Kingwood High School, whose mascot was the Mustangs. 

Students at Springville Junior High School who participate in the Honors English class will read many different pieces of literature throughout the school year. The book they are currently reading called Elantris.

“In class, students researched Elantris, along with other titles, and then gave speeches on behalf of it as well as other books. When we finally voted, Elantris was one of the books selected,” said Mrs. Mary Rice, the Honor’s English teacher at SJHS. All the books that the students are going to read this year were selected by a democratic vote by the students at the beginning of the year. Research was done on these books beforehand so the students knew what to expect from the books.

Mrs. Josie Hales teaches the Computers in Business class, which is a place where students learn how to manage a business using computers. As part of the class, students are creating their own websites.

The students in Computers in Business have been making and managing their own fictional amusement parks. They get to decide what logo, slogan, name, and everything else they want to include about their park. As part of the assignment, students get to make a website advertizing their amusement park. The students began making the websites November 15th. 

Students in photography were recently assigned a new project called Surrealism. This type art was created in Europe 1930’s and was first done in paint. According to Mr. Mitch Cudney, art and photography teacher at Springville Junior High, these photos can turn out to be crazy, zany, and fun when they are finished.

At Springville Junior High, there is something called Quest Time. Quest Time is right after third period where students can go to a room of their choice. Each room has an activity such as the movie, karaoke, board games, writing lab, etc. You are only allowed to go to these fun activities if you have an A, B, or C.       

Guess who’s new this year at Springville Junior High? Mrs. Kelli Lauret had her first walk through the halls of SJHS at the start of the year.  This is Mrs. Lauret’s first year teaching. As a ninth-grade student she took peer tutoring and thought it was a blast. From that point on Mrs. Lauret knew becoming a teacher was exactly what she wanted to be when she grew up.

“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.