Many eighth grade students have switched to Springville Junior High School during the school year. But do you know what it's like to switch to a new school in the middle of the year?

Ashton Lloyd and Kamrynn Blades switched around Christmas time  from Mapleton Junior High School. Kamrynn Blades likes Springville better than Mapleton, but Ashton Lloyd likes Mapleton better than Springville. Kamrynn likes Springville better because she has a lot more friends and people are more welcoming. Springville’s hallways are better and wider. Ashton doesn't like Springville as much because, “Springville doesn't have as many people similar to me.”

At our school we have many very talented performers who love to sing, act, and dance. Luckily for us, we have a choir where kids can let out our creative side and sing out. This choir is called the Master Singers. They are a combination of 8th and 9th graders who love to sing and have incredible voices. This choir is led by the school’s yearbook, choir and director, Mrs Utera.

Students here seem to love choir Daniel Kawai an 8th grader in Master singers says he loves to sing and go travel around to perform. Molly Hunter says, “I love to hang out and sing with my friends!” The master singers get to travel around more than the other choirs get because they are known as the “advanced choir”.

Springville is a small town, but we have some surprisingly fashionable students here at the Junior High. We have several students that want to pursue a career in fashion, and there are several sewing classes that teach about clothing. There aren't a lot of clothing stores in Springville, so most people go out of town to Provo or Orem to shop. Many students said their favorite stores were H&M, Forever 21, Cotton On, Aeropostale, Rue21, and Pacsun. Eva Laraway said her favorite store is Urban Outfitters, which is all the way in Salt Lake City! Clearly our students are willing to go the extra mile to look nice.

Brian Cervantes is 14 years old and was born on February 20th, 2003. He is currently in 8th grade. Brian is a very nice person liked by many, but he considers himself not known by many around the school. If you don’t hear Brian very often, it's probably because he is not very talkative and can be shy at some times.

His favorite animal is a dog, and he also has had a dog as a pet for 8 months. His dog's name is Nicky and is a chihuahua. Some fun things about Brian is that he likes the snow, likes to longboard, and his favorite season in summer. His favorite classes are math because he likes to solve problems, foods because he likes to cook, and health because the teacher is one of his favorites.

In Ms. Piña and Ms. Ottley’s 9th grade English classes, they've recently been learning about the civil rights movement and reading the book Mississippi Trial, 1955. Mississippi Trial is a historical fiction novel about the infamous murder case of young Chicago native Emmett Louis Till. These 9th grade students recently got the golden opportunity to meet with Chris Crowe, the author of Mississippi Trial. They got to listen to him speak about the history behind the book, the process of how he gathered information for it and created his fictional characters, and writing stories in general.  

For 21 years, Mrs Jackson has faithfully taught  as our math teacher at Springville Junior High School,

When asked “ Why did you become a math teacher ” she said that it was   always very fun and interesting for her and that she had a math teacher in elementary that let her work at her own pace and so she loved it and she wanted kids to be excited like her. She is originally from Indiana and therefore her favorite team is the Hoosiers. 3 things that many people probably don’t know about her are, that her husband is three years younger than her and she doesn’t like to read because it’s to hard to focus and she’s been to Mardi Gras.

            Korbin Steele is a 9th grader here at our school. He’s a swell guy to be around, he’s really nice and friendly. An interesting thing about Korbin is that he’s had type 1 diabetes for 13 years. He wouldn’t consider himself well known, and it depends on the day with whether or not he’s friendly.

Q: I have a lot of homework. How do I keep myself focused? How do I not fall too far behind and end up with missing assignments?

A: What I do to focus is put away my phone. That is my biggest distraction when I do my homework. Maybe have someone hide it from you. Also, get organized! If you can keep track of all your assignments it's easier to actually finish them. Last thing, make sure to turn in all your finished assignments. The sooner you turn them in the less likely you are to lose them.

Q: Do you ever doubt the existence of others than you?

        Springville Jr High is a great school, and it has amazing teachers in it. Junior high is grades 7-9 which is really awesome, there is so much activities in this school and so much amazing things and fun stuff like spin the wheel, track, and so many other things that are really fun.