Bruin Point going to the dogs (and other animals)

CARBON SCHOOL DISTRICT
    Bruin Point Elementary wrapped up their year with a lot of activities and important future plans recently.
    Part of that future is in two new teachers who are coming to the school next year. Mrs. Hardy is retiring and another teacher is not returning to the classroom, so Principal Dina Wise said that fortunately she was able to pick up two experienced teachers to take over.
    “One is from the Jordan School District and the other is from Box Elder School District,” she said. “One teacher is Camille Scow who will teach third grade and the other is Alison Montgomery who will be the second grade teacher. Both have family ties to the area which is a good thing. We feel very fortunate to hire experienced teachers. And of course we are losing our secretary of 25 years in Rakele Palmer.”
    Wise went on to lament losing any employees but said that the secretary’s position in an elementary school was the “heart of the school.” She went on to add that they had many great candidates to fill the jobs at the school and in the case of the secretary’s job they hired Samie Howell, who lives in East Carbon.
    She also said the part time custodian, Gene Jacquez,  is retiring and he was the employee of the year at the school and was honored as such at the district’s Retirement and Awards Banquet in early May.
    In another matter she said Sunnyside Cogeneration Associates gave the school two very generous donation through a Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) partnership. With that money the school is going to set up a science resource closet which will have totes with science core objective lessons in them and then the teachers can take those to the classrooms and instruct the students in that area of science.
    Each year the school also has a parking lot party at Miners Trading Post in July in conjunction with Community Days.  That event is to raise money for the school and she said that is usually so successful they do not need to do any other fundraising outside of that. This years event will be on Friday, July 13th.
    The East Carbon community has also started what they call “Forth Fridays.” The first one took place at Bruin Point and was a  meet and greet affair. That one was in March and they are having them every month. It is a get-to-know-your-neighbor type of event.
    And speaking of events, the school actually had an art gallery in May’s First Friday in Helper. While that may seem a little different with it being on the other side of the county Wise had an explanation for it.
    “Every year toward the end of the year we have a Night of Arts to showcase what students have learned in the after school music program that is paid for with our Lands Trust  money.” she explained. In the past our students have only had visual arts for half of the year, but this year we hired a part time art specialist Kecia Vigil and she did art all year long. Which made for an extraordinary year end display. Taylor Powellson who is an interpreter at the school lives in Helper and is involved in their First Friday organization. She told us that she had a friend that had a building in Helper that they would let us use and she asked if we wanted to bring the art there to display. So we put up the art that day and came up with an activity for all the kids that came through that night.”
    She said the school also does a service project each month. In April the students helped Wise raise money for cancer research. For the past eight years Wise has run with a group called Huntsman Hometown Heroes, they raise money for cancer research at the Huntsman Cancer institute. The students payed to wear hats and made donation in behalf on loved ones who have had cancer. The students and faculty collected $275 that helped Wise raise $1400. In May there was a “Pet Parade” in which the kids donate money to participate.  The parade was a little different than what most people might think. Instead of the pets being marched by the students, the pets were put around the track behind the school and the students went around and visited them. $100 was raised and donated to the Carbon County Animal Shelter. Wise also said the students participated in the No Grave Unadorned project on the last day of school.
    “The kids love doing that,” she said. “They look for relatives and the military graves. They are also touched by the graves of the young children who have died.”
    She also said the leveled reading program the district has involved the schools in is really helping students in her school and that watching the growth some students have made since its inception has been exciting. In an effort to help students make a jump in reading over the summer Mrs. Grundy will be in the library on Tuesdays from 11:00 – 1:00, so students can have access to on level books. We hope that all students will take advantage of this opportunity.