Pictured above is Beulah Thompson autographing student Angela
Klein’s copy of “Swineville.” Reprinted from The Standard Examiner. (click to enlarge)
Letter to Mrs. Holmstrom and her 8th grade class from Gov. Mike Leavitt. (click to enlarge)
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The Snowcrest Writing Project
By Sharon Holmstrom Before Snowcrest Junior High was built, our Valley junior high students attended the same school in the same building as the elementary students. The building was older, but the junior high wing was especially pathetic. Our students had lockers and books that were hand me downs from schools in town. But then…one day… (we called it the fickle finger of fate ala Johnny Carson) we learned that the district was going to build us a BRAND-NEW JUNIOR HIGH and even better, we the teachers, would get to help design it. Besides a dark room off the English room for the yearbook students, we were allotted a classroom for WRITING LAB. Personal computers were just starting to be used in schools. They used floppy disks and were very slow. BUT we had a place and time period for students to use the lab for writing projects. Desks were arranged in circles to facilitate collaboration, and all were clad in Snowcrest royal blue laminate. It was a beautiful space. That was when we began to write the historical novels in 8th grade English. At the start of the 8th grade year, we would discuss what things in valley history sounded interesting and might make a good story. The students then researched newspaper archives, wrote letters to local newspapers asking for information and talked to the elders in the community. After much discussion and assessing of information, the class would choose a topic for the novel. They worked together to form a basic plot outline, and which elements should go into each chapter. Each student was assigned a writing partner and a chapter to write. This is when the project would often stall. Students had such differing abilities, so some chapters were more well written than others. We tried not to rewrite what they had done, merely have them correct grammar and structure. Hence, the writing in the books is original to the students and not AI. Without exception, they always discovered interesting and often little-known facts about their subjects, some that had been long forgotten or buried deliberately. On numerous occasions we travelled to actual sites in search of pertinent details. For instance: In the Remembering the Hermitage Hotel, Hotel of Dreams, research turned up a man named Raymond “Cub” Bair who had been a waiter at the historic long gone Hermitage Hotel in Ogden Canyon. In fact, his parents had operated a food stand next to the carousel that was there. He remembered that his parents always put onions on the grill first thing because it attracted hungry customers. In The Valley House, Remembering the Old Times. students discovered a long-buried story of a runaway girl. The Valley House still stands and is both on the historic register and a bed and breakfast. In Fighting the Great Depression, students uncovered the fact that one of the first CCC camps during the great depression was on the edge of Pineview reservoir at Middle Inlet. Young men came to Ogden on the big steam trains from all over, mostly the big cities, to work in the camps. It was our luck to have the original train steam into town on a historic tour at the same time as our students were writing that chapter. My husband and I took those students to the train station to watch it, listen to it; to feel the vibrations of the mammoth engine so they could have a sense of what those boys experienced as they began their unknown journey. With that book we were thrilled when a man named Blaine Fisher responded to a letter from Shelly Montgomery to the Standard Examiner. He had been a cook at the CCC camp in our valley and regaled us with his adventures and some cute stories about the local “gals.” While there was already a lot of history written about Snowbasin, Birth of a Mountain: The Early Days of Snowbasin, Dave and I had the opportunity to take some students to visit Alf Engen himself and to see the actual ORIGINAL MAP he made of what would become the present-day resort. A gentleman named Jeff M. Stephens contacted me one day and asked if he could write his doctoral thesis on the creative process that students went through as they researched and wrote the novels. In addition to following us along with the story, he had a small fund to film students and to publish the book. The kids chose to research and write about the town of Swineville which now lies under the water of Pineview reservoir, but which had been connected to Ogden via the trolley down Ogden Canyon. As with the other novels, we had the privilege of being able to interview elderly people who had memories to share. Beulah Thompson, our main character, was an absolute, memorable delight. She loved the kids and they loved her. Her stories formed the backbone for Swineville, Memories of a Drowning Town. Jeff became DR. Jeff Stephens and later the Superintendent of Weber School District. This last book created a lot of press for so many reasons but mostly because of the collaboration of our young students with our oldest citizens. The writing lab would ever have been possible without Jennifer Sorenson, whose own students created books about LaPlata, the canyon trolley and the Shooting Star, and Sharon Beddes who helped the students, coordinated the manuscript, was our technical guru and kept us sane. Snowcrest students sent copies of their books to then Governor Michael Leavitt who responded with this handwritten letter: “Dear 8th Grade Class, I am so pleased to receive the books containing your stories and written work. It will be a treasure for you and those who read them. Writing is an expression of art that adds greatly to our lives. Mike Leavitt" |
