New year unfolding in exciting fashion at Mont Harmon

CARBON SCHOOL
DISTRICT    
    It has been quite the beginning of the year for those associated with Mont Harmon Middle school.
     First they were mentioned in Utah Governor Gary Herbert’s State of the State address on January 24 as a school that is working cooperatively with BrainStorm Inc., a company in  Utah county which is now a partner in teaching students about the tech world each of them are facing in the future.
    The cooperative effort between the business and the school began with a program early in January when the firm sent over a team of experts that exposed the kids to things like virtual reality, coding, graphic design, video editing and video production. BrainStorm had been working with schools along the Wasatch Front on similar projects, but after a visit by Lieutenant Governor Spencer Cox to their site one day, he challenged by him to find rural schools with which they could do the same thing. They selected Mont Harmon and will continue to be a partner with the school on high tech education for the foreseeable future.
    Next the school participated in a competition at the state level called the Stock Market Game. Hunter King the business teacher at the school was the adviser to the students that competed.
    The Stock Market Game is a national program created by the SIFMA (Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association) Foundation and is played in states throughout America. The Utah Division of Securities is the program administrator for the State of Utah and provides fee waivers for Utah teams to participate.
    “The students were given $100,000 in fake money and can invest it in the stock market in whatever way they choose,” said King. “So they do a little research in what they think might go up and then they invest it.”
    King said in business classes the students discuss the stock market and indicators, and how it all works. In the game orders the students make are entered into a computer and the computer tracks their actions and the results.
    “This competition takes place statewide,” said King. “There were over a thousand teams competing.”
    The game lasted about two months and at the end of it the Mont Harmon team ended up with $135,000 for the fall semester competition. Mont Harmon students came in second in the state in terms of the highest increase for a middle school.
    The team that won consisted of Aubriella Olsen, Jacob Birch, and Otto Riddle.
    Then there is the archery team which took first in the state in the middle school division on February 10.
    “We teach archery in our physical education classes,” he said. “Then we pick the top 24 shooters from that group to be the schools archery team. They are the students we took to the state competition.”
    He said that all together there are about 1100 shooters that participate in the state meet which took place at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City.
    Last year the team qualified for nationals and so the students that were eligible went to Kentucky for those events.
    “We did pretty well there, finishing in the middle of the pack,” he said and then referred to this years winners. “The program has grown and some of the kids that were on last years team were on it this year as well.”
    The team did the deed with real depth.
    Kacie Brady of Mont Harmon was the top girls shooter in the entire tournament with a 270. Jezmin Pressett scored a 269 and Cheyanne Slaughter shot a 267. In fact six out of the top 11 finishers in the tournament were from Mont Harmon.
    On the boys side Nathan Engar was seventh in the entire tournament with a 269 and the boys finished with three of the top 10 finishers from Mont Harmon. The other two in that group were Parker Morgan with a 268 and Dylan Curtis with a 267.
    Lasslo has also been involved in a program to teach kids about outdoor kinds of activities and the school has been teaming up with the Division of Wildlife Resources for such things as hunter safety and fishing education.
    “This past fall they let our kids fish for a day down at the Fairgrounds Fishing Pond,” said Lasslo. “Every student got to keep one fish they caught and then when we were done we came back to the school. Miss Vande Sluis, the home economics teacher lets us use her room for the day and we went ahead and cooked the fish.”
    The idea is to have students understand the whole process from catching the fish to preparing them. Lasslo said the the people at DWR have been awesome to work with and have tried to accommodate the school in every way.