DRAPER, Utah — The students at Draper Park Middle School are proud to be Vikings, which is why they are our Cool School of the Week.
"The students are what makes this place great," said the student government adviser.
On Wednesday, the halls were filled with "D-P-M-S" chants. I'll admit it; I started them since I'm a Draper Park alumni, but the halls are also filled with opportunities.
"I feel like the extracurricular activities — the list just goes on and on," said one student.
"There are some opportunities at this school I didn't think would happen until high school," added another.
Some of those opportunities include band, ceramics, and family and consumer sciences. The band performed an awesome song Wednesday morning, and the ceramics classroom was full of creative students. One student made a Fortnite-inspired burger, another a roll of sushi, and during a previous unit, someone made a ceramic box of chocolates.
"It's so fun to be here, we can create whatever we want," said one ceramics student.
In the FACS classroom just down the hall, students are all in on their version of cupcake wars.
"Every group makes cupcakes, and like teachers and admin come taste them and see who makes the best cupcake," said one student.
Some of the creative cupcakes we saw were chocolate Oreo mint, minion cupcakes, a raspberry lemon, and a strawberry vanilla.
"I chose to take this class because I really want to learn about cooking and stuff," said a student.
Draper Park is also home to the National Education Support Professional of the Year. Head custodian Andy Markus won the prestigious award at a conference in Louisville, Kentucky, last weekend. It was a lengthy process to get selected, but Markus now wears the title proudly.
"It was pretty cool. It was a once-in-a-lifetime shot because once you're nominated, you don't have any other chance," he said. "I'm loving it so far."
In the choir room, students are learning about a cappella, and their energetic singing and dancing are still stuck in my head!
"We're working on how to work together in a collaborative process, how to kind of approach every song like a team," said the choir teacher.
At the end of the morning, Draper Park Middle School Principal Denzil "Chip" Watts accepted a donation from Granite Credit Union on behalf of the school's Latinos in Action program.
"This donation from Granite Credit Union is just to support all the wonderful work you do and the Latinos in Action," said Charlotte Toone with Granite Credit Union.
"This will be great. We'll use it to help with tutoring, reading tutoring that we're doing with our Latinos in Action," said Principal Watts. "It'll help them and our elementary school kids."
If you know of a "Cool School" we should feature, you can email nominations to GoodDayUtah@fox13now.com or fill out the nomination form at the link below.
Community
