By: Harley Bennett For three years, Averie Goodliffe has been the only Bear River High School cheerleader in her grade. She hasn’t really minded being alone in this way and said, “It hasn’t been super weird for me; I’ve gotten the chance to get close to the girls older and younger than me.”
As a little girl, Goodliffe would watch the high school cheerleaders at games and other events and wanted to be just like them. Goodliffe has been cheering for around ten years total and she wouldn’t trade it for the world! In the beginning of her high school cheer career, Goodliffe found cheer difficult because she was the “baby” of the team. Overall, though, the hardest thing about cheer for Goodliffe has been learning and memorizing all the cheers, dances, routines, and band dances. Despite this, Goodliffe said cheer has been very rewarding. Her favorite thing about being on the cheer team is all the friendships and funny memories: “The games are so much fun and performing always makes me so happy!” One of Goodliffe’s most favorite memories is when the cheer team went to Disneyland for nationals and stayed until they closed. Goodliffe has never thought about stopping cheer: she has loved every step of the way. Goodliffe is sad to graduate and let cheer go, but is so grateful for every second she got with her amazing team. She is excited to go off into the world and be an adult. Bear River High School wishes you luck, Averie!
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By: Chaston Firth Taige Austin is changing lives in the community by running for Miss Box Elder’s Outstanding Teen. She will compete against 51 contestants performing their own choreographed platform describing what they are competing to fix. Most of the contestants are presenting their platform about fighting domestic abuse, bullying, or something of that nature. Taige has prepared a boxing routine to display fighting for resilience to inspire all those who are fighting their own personal problems and prove that a bad day doesn't mean a bad life.
Austin said she was inspired to run in the pageant by her neighbors who think that she will have fun running and would do a great job. She looks forward to gaining the great social skills that come with competing. Taige has started an Instagram account called ‘the_lotusteffect’ where she posts really good inspirational quotes to further her campaign. Every day she has a different topic: Service Sunday, Motivational Monday, Talk About It Tuesday, Wide-open Wednesday, Thankful Thursday, and (her personal favorite) Failed-it Friday. Failed-it Friday comes with a video of a failure to encourage being able to laugh and have a positive view on your mishaps. One particularly notable quote from her page is “Losers quit when they fail. Winners fail until they succeed.” Austin selflessly pushes to help anyone who might be going through a hard time and always tries to let everyone know that mistakes are essential to self growth with her crazy inspirational stories and positive outlook on anything and everything. Austin hopes to progress from Miss Box Elder’s Outstanding Teen to Miss Utah’s Outstanding Teen, and even run for Miss America’s Outstanding Teen. She is trying to earn some scholarships from becoming a public figure so more people can hear her message and donate. Austin donates all of her earned money from this program to a children's miracle network. She loves that she is able to make an impact by becoming more widely known and hopes to be a better person for herself and those around her. Austin has grown so much through this experience and doesn’t want it to ever come to an end. By: Hollis Barlow Mrs. Dawn Richards is one of our introductory math teachers and is known as always having a smile on her face. For reference, in the past, teachers used to have a two hour work time before school.
Thirteen years ago, Mrs. Richards decided to drop by the dentist during her two hour work time to quickly get her tooth filled in. Little did she know, this decision would lead to quite the embarrassing day. She drove to the dentist, and sat in the chair. The dentist decided to give her a shot to numb the spot he was working on. However, the shots did not work, and after about seven shots Mrs. Richards was out of it. Eventually, the dentist decided to use a local anesthetic because Mrs. Richards was running out of time and needed to get back to school. He used a numbing agent and then injected the local anesthetic; reasonably, she was out of it. She passed out in the chair and woke up to her dentist asking if she was okay. She of course was still affected by the shots, but she decided to push through. Mrs. Richards managed to make it back to school in time, but couldn’t remember the drive back. She was getting ready for class when a student approached her and insisted that she go take a look at herself in the mirror. Mrs. Richards went and looked in the mirror and, to her surprise, the half of her face that had taken the shots had dropped by at least a half inch. To add to that, Mrs. Richards helped a student ask their friend to prom during one of her classes. She ended up pushing the girl down the hall in a roll chair while the girl yelled “Muffin!”. Another thing that occured is students coming and taking selfies with her. Mrs. Richards actually had a student come back ten years later who showed her one of the selfies and she didn't even remember taking it. Needless to say, the whole day was quite embarrassing and she never went to the dentist before school ever again. By: Victoria Cottrell When Kelby Avery was a novice violinist, little did she know that she would progress to the point of being concertmaster for the Bear River High School Orchestra and achieving the admirable position as instrumental music Sterling Scholar. Avery started her journey in music as a small child when she would sing in the car at the top of her lungs. She first began with piano at the age of six which she still continues with, but in sixth grade she found her true love: the violin. With this newfound passion, Avery immediately began private lessons and actively participated in orchestra. Since then, Avery has explored a variety of instruments including the ukulele, guitar, and accordion.
Avery’s passion for music spills over into her activities and she has had many positive experiences sharing her talent. A way she shares her talent is by playing in nursing homes. One such experience was particularly amazing in how she was able to emotionally relate to her listeners. Avery remarked how “talking to the older residents can be hard, but through music you are able to connect easier.” Avery noticed that she was able to connect through music easily and has continued to perform at nursing homes. With a motivation to enhance and share her talent coming from that experience, Avery has volunteered for many community services, performed for many different groups, joined the North Utah Youth Symphony, been in three chamber groups, and participated in Solo and Ensemble competitions for three years. Another remarkable goal Avery has achieved with her talent for the violin is being the concertmaster for the Bear River orchestra. To accomplish this, Avery has had to volunteer extra time to help the orchestra’s director, Mrs. Mckenna. She has also had to show an outreach to her fellow members of the orchestra by helping them when she can. And finally, Avery successfully auditioned for her position. Avery has really shown how much any person can grow through music with her myriad of accomplishments. Even though Avery has worthily earned a reputation for being an amazing artist, the best part for her is sharing emotion with those who hear her. She said that “seeing their emotion makes you want to keep performing.” By: Harley Bennett Mrs. Heidi Jensen has been teaching for 21 years, and has always taught at Bear River High School. She has loved every single second of it! Mrs. Jensen said that her favorite thing about teaching is “the diversity [of her students]... they all have different strengths and struggles.” She enjoys helping students understand the lesson and the material.
Mrs. Jensen said she knew she wanted to teach because she felt so comfortable in that profession. She loves helping her students learn and become more engaged in various activities. She has taught five subjects in total: English, Spanish, Yearbook, Newspaper, and Journalism. Mrs. Jensen shared an embarrassing story from her first year teaching. She was to be in the welcome back assembly. In one of the practice assemblies, her skirt fell to her ankles and she was terrified that a student might have seen her. Mrs. Jensen said that the most important thing about being a teacher is to “keep our goal on the students… If we lose sight of that we have nothing left”. Her advice for students is to “go in with the intention to learn every day…You get what you put into it.” By: Jose Isaacson Bear River High School is centered around an agricultural community. With all the farming and growing of crops accidents are common. Caleb Barfuss knows how a little farming mishap can quickly escalate into something scary.
Barfuss and his father were out irrigating fields one night and Barfuss stated that there was a canal that his father had told him to be careful about. A small bridge was the main way to cross the canal. Barfuss said that on this specific night he was incredibly tired and just wanted to sleep. Minutes felt like hours to Barfuss that night, in his young age he got scared and called out for his dad. When Barfuss did not hear a response, he went to find his father, crossed the bridge, but found nothing. Barfuss began to panic and quickly ran to a neighbor’s house. In the meantime, his father had gone back to the truck to discover his son was missing. Thinking Barfuss had drowned, his parents began to freak out. Barfuss eventually made his way to his grandma’s house and found his mom crying and worrying about her son. Barfuss said, “The whole thing was scary for me, but worse for them.” Barfuss spent most of the night looking for his parents and his parents spent most of their night thinking he had drowned in the canal. In the interview with Barfuss, the interviewer told Caleb that it was good his parents eventually found him. Caleb quickly interrupted and, in a joking manner, said, “No, I found them.” By: Hollis Barlow Photo Credit: Perry Topham Perry Topham, a sophomore, has quite a funny and embarrassing photo of himself and this is the story of said embarrassing photo. Topham was five years old when he decided that he wanted to be a fairytale princess along with his sisters. With that ambition in mind, he snuck into their room and put on one of the girl’s dresses. His sister, Mollie Topham, of course thought it was particularly hilarious that he had put on a princess dress so she snapped a photo. At the time, it didn’t matter to Topham: he was excited he had gotten to wear the stylish dress! As he got older though, his siblings constantly teased and embarrassed him concerning that incident. Topham’s older sisters love showing the photo to his friends, much to his mortification. Luckily, Topham isn’t too distraught about the photo; he handles it with sophistication and can even laugh about it nowadays. At least this picture could give him a quite hilarious yearbook senior baby photo.
Topham’s picture is a good way of showing that everyone has an embarrassing story or photo from when they were younger that they just can’t escape. We all have either a parent or a sibling that is overjoyed to bring up the story in vivid detail or show the picture excitedly. And while sometimes hearing these stories can make our faces go red and become flushed, they are quite entertaining and shouldn’t be taken too seriously or stressed too much. As you get older, those stories and photos can give us nice reminders of when we were young, supplying us with a way of looking back and laughing. And no matter how red or flushed you may get after hearing the story, it's always a good thing to be able to look back on yourself and laugh at a goofy or embarrassing thing you have done. By: Chaston Firth There are approximately 50 teachers currently teaching at Bear River High School, the newest one being Mrs. Kassidy Lake. Mrs. Lake was born in Idaho Falls on December 30, 1996 and started teaching at Bear River at the start of this school year. This is Mrs. Lake’s first teaching job and she quickly grew to like Bear River because of its cool “family vibe” and because it is smaller than the 5A high school she had attended: Northridge.
Mrs. Lake said that Bear River feels like home and it has been a very comfortable place for her to learn the values of teaching. Mrs. Lake plans on teaching at Bear River for as long as she can. It is really cool that she has such big goals and enjoys being with students and teaching them important lessons. The reason she wanted to become a teacher is because she loves to watch kids “connect the dots” when she teaches a lesson. She enjoys talking with her students and helping them learn important lessons that will help them with their lives. She also wants to improve her own social skills. Mrs. Lake doesn’t have a favorite class and said she loves all her students equally, although she mentioned that foods is probably her favorite content to teach. Outside of school, Mrs. Lake likes to read books, spend time with her family, and occasionally go horse riding. Mrs. Lake definitely has enthusiasm for her content and enjoys teaching. The greatest teacher is definitely one that enjoys their job. By: Harley Bennett Mr. Steven Meyer, a science teacher, has been teaching at Bear River for 28 years and even student taught at Bear River. In that time, he has had many experiences with students and shared some experiences and insights.
Mr. Meyer’s most interesting story would have to be the time that he collected gum in jars and had three full jars by the time the year was over. Two of his students wanted to work off U’s and came in to scrape off all the gum under 36 individual desks. Mr. Meyer got lucky and said that he has never had anything embarrassing happen while teaching (knock on wood). The worst thing Mr. Meyer has ever had happen while teaching was when, in the middle of a lesson, the chemistry class next door made an explosion causing his clock to fall off the wall. Mr. Meyer remarked on how many phones he’s had to take away and said, “I take role with the phone caddy so most days I only have five or six students according to the caddy.” Mr. Meyer said the best thing about teaching is“keep[ing] my brain young: my brain is on school mode 24/7.” Keeping students focused can be an issue, according to Mr. Meyer, but usually there’s not a big problem. He said that he loved getting to teach in the same building as his wife, Mrs. Emalee Meyer, a FACS teacher who retired last year. The two teachers would often compare students and he would brag about having the best students. Mr. Meyer has dealt with many students over the years, some easy some hard, but in the end he loves watching his students succeed and graduate and become amazing people. |
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February 2024
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