Hoopeston Area Middle School

🧡💙 Hoopeston Area Middle School Volleyball Parent/Player Meeting 🏐

Calling all 6th–8th grade students interested in playing volleyball!

Join us for the Parent/Player Meeting on Wednesday, November 20 at 5:00 PM in Coach Logan Smith’s classroom at John Greer Grade School.

Come learn more about the upcoming season, expectations, and how to get involved.

Tryouts begin December 1!

Questions?
📧 Coach Garrison – garriskl@hoopeston.k12.il.us

📧 Coach Mann – mannac@hoopeston.k12.il.us

Let’s get ready for another great season of Cornjerker Volleyball!

The Eastern Illinois Foodbank has shared an updated list of food pantries and meal programs available throughout Vermilion County.

📍 The flyer includes locations, contact information, and hours for area pantries in Hoopeston, Danville, Potomac, and more.
⏰ Some locations may adjust hours around holidays, so it’s a good idea to call ahead before visiting.

Families are encouraged to review the flyer and reach out to any listed sites for assistance or additional information.

🥫🌟 HAMS Food Drive Challenge! 🌟🥫

We’re excited to announce our HAMS Food Drive Challenge, running November 3–21! Students will collect as many nonperishable food items as possible in their 1st-hour classes to help restock our school pantry and support families in need this season. Each day, items will be counted and then put into our pantry for immediate use.

Every item will be counted daily toward a schoolwide total, and the top class in each grade level will win a BIG treat! 🍩🎉

This is a great way for our students to give back, practice kindness, and make a real difference right here in our community.

Thank you for supporting our Cornjerkers & their families!

For more information, contact Mrs. Garrison, Mrs. MacDonald, or Mrs. Klaber.

❤️ Red Ribbon Week at HAMS! ❤️

Our HAMS students have been participating in a variety of activities to celebrate Red Ribbon Week, a national campaign that encourages students to make healthy, drug-free choices and support one another.

One of our favorite activities was creating our Red Ribbon Week Tree, filled with student pledges to be drug-free and positive affirmations! A few of our students helped bring the display to life — adding ribbons, organizing pledges, and spreading positivity throughout the halls.

Each ribbon represents a commitment to making healthy choices, supporting one another, and taking care of ourselves.

We’re so proud of our Cornjerkers for promoting kindness, leadership, and positive decision-making all week long!

The HAMS attended the IAJHSC Fall Workshop at St. Mary's School.

The HAMS Band and Chorus were amazing this evening! Congratulations to the directors and students on a great performance!

HAMS staff members participated in their annual Alma Mater day today. Purdue University, University of Illinois, Eastern Illinois University, Illinois State University, Southern Illinois University, Mississippi State University, Oklahoma State University, Stetson University, Lincoln Christian College, and Missouri Valley College were represented.

Congratulations to the HAMS newspaper class for producing their first issue of Cornjerker Times for the year. They’ve worked to learn the structure of a newspaper; editing skills; layout; and photography. And now, they are putting these skills to work. Keep up the great work!

This week in Mrs. Mac's Life Skills and Math class we got to put our fractions knowledge to the test by using measuring utensils! This pumpkin cloud dough turned out fantastic thanks to our awesome math skills!

Mrs. Mac's Life Skills Class carved a pumpkin and has been working on some fun fall activities! We are excited to watch our pumpkin seeds grow and enjoy some pumpkin flavored recipes soon!

The HAMS 8th Grade Honors ELA class wrapped up their suspense unit by writing suspenseful narrative stories. Students shared their stories around the “campfire” while eating s’mores. And classmates voted for the first 2025-26 winners of the “Lee-sie Award of Literary Excellence.” Congratulations to: 1st: Avery S. 2nd: Armani C. 3rd: Bentlie B.

HAMS 7th grade students just completed reading the novel, “The Outsiders.” We began the unit with teachers and staff transforming into Greasers and Socs. We are ending the unit by enjoying bologna sandwiches, “chocolate cake,” and Pepsi, which the novel characters loved. It’s been “tuff!”

Ms. Kennedy's science classes are learning about density. Today students got a chance to go to the lab and practice water displacement and using scales to help calculate density.

Today, Mr. Wells' Middle School Drama Class met (via Google Meet) and interviewed professional actor and Vermilion County native, Tyler Jacob Moore. 7th and 8th graders in the class developed their own questions and he talked about what it takes to succeed in show business. Spoiler Alert: It involves reading, continuing to grow and learn, and hard work! Today's interview was a great experience for the kids. #tylerjacobmoore #cornjerkerpride

The HAMS Piano Lab class has doubled in size this school year. We are excited to continue to offer this opportunity to our students!

Some students complain about reviewing grammar, but not when we set it up as a game show. Mr. Wells' 8th Grade ELA students had a chance to "come on down" and be contestants on "Noun or...Nah"! #cornjerkerpride

Today our 8th grade math students talked about how to face our storms of life. Students first depicted how they currently handle tough situations, usually by running away from them or hiding out until it passes. We watched an inspirational clip about how cows and bison handle storms differently. Bison are the only animals that instinctively turn to run into a storm instead of running away or hiding from the storm. They made a plan for how to handle the storms of life this year like the bison by facing it head on. These 8th graders are ready for a great and challenging year. #HAMS #CornjerkerPride

The students in Mrs. Lee's HAMS 8th grade honors ELA class have spent this week creating art with an ELA twist -- all to learn more about themselves and prepare for their year. Students chose three colors to paint on their canvases, then learned the symbolism of those colors. Then, they reflected on a word to guide them through the year, and added that word to their canvases. Students wrote about the experience and how it will shape them as they move through their 8th grade year. We are looking forward to an incredible year with purpose! 

We know our students are going to grow academically & physically this school year. HAMS 8th graders gathered their baseline data to prove how much they will grow physically over the next nine months. We will find out in May how much they have literally grown.