By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News

As the 25-26 school year approaches its midway point, teachers and administrators are reviewing midyear testing results. At Helper Middle School, this review shows significant improvement from the students.

To discuss this growth and other happenings at Helper Middle, Principal Nikki Vasquez joined the KOAL newsroom for this week’s Carbon School District Update.

“One of the things that we have been focusing on the last couple of years is just the basic math facts,” shared Vasquez of the school’s goals. “We started the year with 31% of our students who were proficient in addition 15% in subtraction 25%, in multiplication, and 22% in division, and I am so happy to say that right now, as of today, we have 76% proficient in addition 58% in subtraction 52% multiplication and 44% in division. So we’ve made some huge gains already.”

Middle School poses the interesting challenge of educating students both academically and socially. Vasquez discussed how HMS approaches this balance,” It’s actually my favorite group. I just love them so much. They’re still so malleable, but they’re old enough to know, so it’s just a really, really great fit, and we’re super excited. We’re celebrating with them along the way, and hopefully, we’ll have a big celebration once we reach our goal of 95% … We have just the beginning of the year data now, and we’ll retest in December, so we’re hopeful that we’re seeing some huge gains there as well.

Recently, Helper students performed a rendition of Frankenstein as a part of the theater elective. Vasquez praised the group for the performance,” They really do, and it’s an elective, so they have to choose to do it and then to do some extra things outside of school. It just requires a lot of our students, and they do a fantastic job. And it’s always exciting to see them put on a production.”

She continued, praising the efforts of students to get out and get involved outside of school: “We really try to push our kids to do something. Some kids are not able to, but we do have a variety of activities for them to do. So we have RPG Club, which is role-playing games. Obviously, drama, and it’s again, it’s not an extracurricular, but it does kind of feel like that. We do have Quiz Bowl and the sports, obviously, so yeah, I think we do get a good variety for students to be able to participate in something.”

With the holidays rapidly approaching, Vasquez shared some of the upcoming festivities students will be able to partake in,” We have Thanksgiving bingo coming up, and that’s been a tradition for several years. We actually have bingo cards, and they play bingo and earn prizes. And this year, we actually have some better prizes. And so we’re super excited about that. It’s fun to watch the kids just understand, you know, there’s some different kind of fun to be had out there. And then we’ll end up with Christmas dodgeball right before Christmas break. It’s just a huge celebration, give them some downtime right before Christmas break and do carnival-style activities.”

One ongoing initiative at the school is to ensure that every student feels welcome. Vasquez explained how they aim to accomplish this: “We really do try to emphasize that in all aspects, and so when we talk in PLC meetings, I ask our staff to call students by name. So hopefully every student is being called by name several times a day, and that’s just something you’re not gonna get in a bigger school district.”

Closing our conversation, Vasquez shared a simple message,” Come check us out sometime and check out our building. It’s great.”

To keep up with what’s happening at Helper Middle School, visit the school’s website or follow them on Facebook.