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Sandy Journal

Willow Canyon’s dedicated teachers feel the love through its 50 years

Oct 07, 2024 02:30PM ● By Julie Slama

Families look through Willow Canyon’s class photos through the years at the 50-year celebration of the school. (Julie Slama/City Journals)

1974 — 50 years ago.

It was a time when the nation was in turmoil as President Richard Nixon resigned following the Watergate scandal, gas prices were still high after the 1973 oil crisis and troops were still fighting in Vietnam.

In Sandy, Willow Canyon Elementary opened in a quiet neighborhood off 1700 East.

It started with its own turmoil, said Kirk Denison, the sixth former principal of the school.

“The first principal, Vern Clegg, was my cousin,” he said. “He told me that it was a challenge opening the school when everything wasn’t finished. It was mostly done, but the playground wasn’t ready. They had black-topped it, but there wasn’t any equipment, no lines for four-square and other games and the grass fields weren’t ready.”

Denison said that his cousin said despite that, he was excited.

“Vern said, ‘I’ve got a dedicated staff to start this school in this new community. It’s going to be a great school,’” he recalled.

Denison didn’t realize he’d be principal 20 years later at that same “great school.”

“There were some changes from when he opened the doors to when I stepped in them. They built walls so they were no longer open classrooms. We were a year-round school then and needed 10 portables to have enough classrooms for our 1,200 students. I used to call it the ‘little city,’ but it took up a lot of the playground so there wasn’t as much room for the kids at recess. The biggest problems were fitting students in the cafeteria and gym, which weren’t built for that many students so we had strict timelines, and especially the bathrooms. They didn’t anticipate that many students when those were built,” he said.

Despite that, Denison said the “kids were great and very cooperative.”

He was involved with their learning whether it was turning on the new Commodore 64 computers in the lab at the start of the day or writing musicals about the United States and history of music for sixth graders to perform.

“It was like a tour of the U.S. and they’d sing songs about the different states like ‘California, Here I Come,’ ‘Oklahoma!’ and ‘New York, New York.” Another one they’d sing a song from every decade, from the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s up until that time, in the 1990s,” Denison said.

The PTA was “outstanding” at motivating students to read 9,000 books, he recalled.

“I promised to shave my head if they met their goal,” Denison said. “After they shaved it, they painted it green and gold, the school colors. It was around Halloween, so I used that as part of my costume; I was the Greek god, Atlas.”

Other times, for successful fun runs, he ate worms — deep fried, dipped in chocolate and other prepared ways — and got pulled in a wagon having soap and water thrown on him as part of a “human car wash.”

Denison also dressed up as Santa Claus to distribute candy canes for the annual holiday singalongs.

“It was so funny because my beard kept falling off and the kids all knew it was me,” he said.

Not only was his heart with the kids, but the students also remembered him.

Mike Knaub, who, during Willow Canyon’s 50th anniversary open house and welcome back to school night, had paged through school photos found his own school photo taken in a Boy Scout uniform, remembered his principal.

“Mr. Denison, he knew every single kid’s name. That was amazing to me. He always was involved in what we were doing,” he said. “We lived a street away, so I walked and had good friends I grew up with. I remember we had great playgrounds and great teachers. We went on fun field trips to the zoo, Hansen Planetarium, Kennecott, some plays, the symphony.”

He also remembered being bused to Granite Elementary for part of his kindergarten year because they were putting up the interior walls to make individual classrooms.

Decades later, his own son, Colby, walks to Willow Canyon and has similar impressions of his elementary school.

“I like the playgrounds, they’re really fun and my friends are really nice,” Colby Knaub said. “I’ve been on field trips to the zoo, the symphony and some plays and my teacher all are really nice.”

Denison said “the staff was professional. The faculty were hard workers and ready to introduce any new programs to help students learn. They were dedicated to that community; there was not much turnover.”

Canyons Board of Education member Karen Pedersen taught 33 of her 41 years at Willow Canyon and lives in the neighborhood.

“There is such camaraderie as a faculty that we stayed intact,” she said. “Oftentimes, at other schools, teachers move, but we stayed together. We’d help each other. We worked as a family. The kids could feel that we supported one another,” she said.

Pedersen remembers the open classroom, followed by the busing to Granite Elementary.

“I was teaching fourth grade and I could look across the media center to see and hear what was happening in another class,” she said. “As teachers, we built walls with our bookcases to define our space. It wasn’t good educational situation. Only the kiva offered a closed room back in the day. We would go there for music, and you could go there if you had a presenter or need to show videos or filmstrips before that. They worked on putting the walls up in the summer, but they weren’t done in time for us to return since we were year-round, so we were bused with our totes to Granite, the only time our students have ever been bus students — and they loved it,” she said.

Pedersen remembers the school getting upgrades, like skylights, that added natural light to the classrooms; upgraded computers where they would introduce educational games like “The Oregon Trail,” and when “an actual wildcat was reported in the neighborhood. We had to call the kids in from recess, not just to keep the kids safe, but to keep that poor mountain lion safe, because all the kids would have wanted to swarm it.”

Not only were there multiple principals during her tenure, but multiple Wilford the Wildcat mascots as well.

Now, with the school’s 50th, came the rolling out of the fifth version of the mascot, designed by Canyons graphic designer, Jeff Olson, who worked alongside the school’s 13th and current principal, Nicole Svee Magann, and members of the committee.

“The last mascot was a little bit too cartoony so we wanted to give Wilford a bit more of a sports feel; we also wanted to make sure he looked like a wildcat, not a bobcat, but more of a lynx to give him a unique look,” Olson said. “I had most of him designed last year, but I worked on the fonts and the shape of the wildcat before unveiling him tonight.”

When students look at the mascot at first, they can recognize it, but when they move closer, they can discover more about Wilford, such as seeing a forest in his green eyes.

“We wanted to harken back to the color green and include the forest. I designed a suite of logos to give them different options that they could use for different situations,” Olson said.

Svee Magann said it was important to give Wilford a more dignified look.

“He has a strong tie to the community; everyone seems to remember him,” she said as she talked amongst the patrons that night. “It was amazing that we found school photos from every year, pictures of every principal and even the dedication ceremony speech on a tape reel so all we need is to find a player.”

Earlier, with the help of a student, she opened a 20-year time capsule with items about the school and community, including a DVD of the fastest mile of pennies in a world record time of two hours, 26 minutes and seven seconds set at the school on Dec. 4, 2004.

Svee Magann also pulled out a photo book.

“It shows what the school looked like then; it hasn’t changed much,” she said.

Thirteen-year teaching veteran LaRonda Blanchat welcomed her 24 third-grade students to their new classroom.

“I’ve got lots of siblings from other former students, so I know several families already,” she said. “It’s going to be a fun year. I’m going to let the kids brainstorm together what we would like to do to celebrate the 50th of Willow Canyon to involve them to make it special.”  λ