A Lafayette High School teacher was recently nominated for the Harris History Teacher Award.

Derek Frieling was nominated for the award by the State Historical Society of Missouri, administrator of the National History Day program in Missouri.

Each of the 57 National History Day affiliates may nominate one middle school and one high school teacher for the $5,000 national awards and Frieling is the high school nominee from Missouri.

According to a National History Day press release, the awards are presented to “teachers who demonstrate a commitment to engaging students in historical learning through innovative use of primary sources, implementation of active learning strategies to foster historical thinking skills, and participation in the National History Day Contest.”

Frieling said the National History Day contest gives students the opportunity to compete in five different categories.

“(Those categories are) writing a paper, building a website, producing a documentary, building an exhibit and putting on a performance,” Frieling said. “Students compete against each other. Each year there’s a theme, this year is ‘Conflict and Compromise.’ They have to work the project around that theme, show the importance of their event or the people involved and how it relates to that time and why it’s still important today.”

Several students this year presented projects on the Salem Witch Trials and Frieling said two of his students made state finals with projects on the Tuskegee Airmen and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.

Frieling, also an adjunct professor at Missouri Western State University, said he’s not in it just to win contests, but to help students learn and apply history lessons to their lives.

“I really appreciate that people recognize my dedication to my students and the history profession,” Frieling said. “This is my 23rd year of teaching and I still find it important that students need to be able to relate historical events to their lives to make their own lives more important, more valid, and be able to learn those lessons so they can make better decisions in their own lives.”

Frieling said since the announcement of his nomination, he’s been hearing from former students and parents.

“Since the School District has put the announcement on their Twitter feed and on the website and everything, I’ve had a lot of people that have told me congratulations and posted stories about when they remember they were in my class or their kid was in my class… Can’t believe I had that sort of an impact. That’s been really cool to see those posts the last couple of days,” Frieling said.

The two national winners of the Harris History Teacher Award will be announced on National History Day on June 14th.

For more information about National History Day, click here.

Listen to the full interview with Derek Frieling below:

Spring seems to finally be here to stay and with the nicer weather, farmers markets are starting up again in the area.

The Pony Express Farmers Market started over the weekend in the East Hills Mall parking lot in St. Joseph. It runs from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Wednesdays and Saturdays. For more information, go to ponyexpressfarmersmarket.com.

The 2018 Maryville farmers market season will kick off on May 5.

Maryville Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Lily White said the farmers market runs from 7:30 a.m. until noon or until vendors run out of products.

“Our farmers market group has a lot of fun ideas this year, they’re going to do ‘Healthy Saturdays’ and even have some ideas for recipes that you can make with the vendor’s product that’s there this year,” White said.

The farmers market will be set up in the parking lot on 4th and Buchanan on Saturdays in Maryville. For more information, click here.

An annual program in St. Joseph which encourages students to be safe drivers, wrapped up with a student winning a car over the weekend.

The St. Joseph Police Department, along with KJO 105.5, Q Country 92.7, Car City, the Missouri Department of Transportation and others put on the “I’m a Safe Driver” program to encourage young drivers to practice safe driving habits.

Officer Brendan McGinnis with the police department’s Traffic Unit is the coordinator of the Safe Driver Program.

McGinnis said the program has been going on for about 14 years.

“The program is basically an incentive program to encourage safe driving among high school students in Buchanan County,” McGinnis said. “They register during the first couple days of school during high school registration. When they register (they) agree to not receive any traffic tickets or be in any at-fault accidents or have any driving, alcohol or drug related contacts with the police department. As long as they can maintain that status throughout the school year, at the end of April, we give away a car to someone that was registered at the beginning of the year.”

McGinnis said giving a car away each year can be a life changing experience for young drivers.

“The girl that won it this year was needing a car to get back and forth to school and now she has a car,” McGinnis said. “I think it’s a positive way for us and the sponsors to be involved in something that, there’s no negative, it’s all positive. Teen drivers account for 75 percent of most crashes throughout the nation. They are the high target area for many local, state and federal level campaigns to drive safe, not text and drive, don’t drink and drive, all those type of campaigns.”

McGinnis said they discovered the program being used in Arizona and customized and implemented it locally.

The “I’m a Safe Driver” program ended with a grand prize of a car being given away over the weekend to Keylee, a safe student driver from Benton High School.

For more information about the program, visit the St. Joseph Police Department’s website.

Saturday’s Prescription Drug Take Back in St. Joseph had the largest turnout since the event began several years ago.

According to Sgt. Larry Stobbs Jr. with the St. Joseph Police Department, the event has been held in the spring and fall for at least seven years in St. Joseph as a way to safely dispose of unused or expired medications.

According to Sgt. Stobbs, 466 cars came through during the event between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Saturday in the East Hills Mall parking lot. Stobbs said 938 pounds of prescription drugs were dropped off, along with 63 pounds of prescription bottles, 11 pounds of inhalers and 118 pounds of needles.

The event is sponsored by The St. Joseph Youth Alliance, the Drug Free Community Coalition, Buchanan County Sheriff’s Department and the St. Joseph Police Department.

The East Hills Library is looking for volunteers to help out with their summer reading program and more.

Applicants must be 12-18 years of age and be able to work at least one shift a week for a minimum of five weeks between June 1 and August 1.

East Hills Library Youth Services Manager Jess Gould said the youth volunteer program was started a few years ago and not only helps out the library, but also benefits the students volunteering.

“I think we live in a community where you can really make changes in your community if you put forth the effort and time to become involved,” Gould said. “Not only does this help kids prepare for future employment by having sign-in procedures, customer services skills, working with other teenagers that they might not know, having that opportunity to be in a professional environment outside of school will really benefit them in the long run. In addition to that, I think, just fostering the appreciation for giving time and energy to our community is a skill that all teenagers and adults could benefit from.”

Applications are posted on the St. Joseph Public Library website and paper copies are available at the library. Applications are due by 4 p.m. on Saturday, May 12. Gould said there is an orientation volunteers need to attend before the program starts.

For more information, contact Jess at the East Hills Library at (816) 236-2136.

An apartment house was destroyed, but no one was injured in a Wednesday morning fire.

According to St. Joseph Fire Department Fire Inspector Mindy Andrasevits, the fire at 122 North 13th St. was reported at 11 a.m. on Wednesday. Two people were at the five-unit apartment at the time of the fire but they, along with pets, were able to get out of the building safely.

Andrasevits said fire crews were on scene until 3:50 p.m. and the cause of the fire is still under investigation.

Andrasevits said the house is on the historic registry and was built in the 1800s.

Lafayette High School is grieving the loss of a student killed in a car crash over the weekend.

Darius Harris, a senior at Lafayette, was killed in the crash early Sunday morning on I-229. Evan Steele, also a senior at Lafayette, was transported to the hospital after the crash and was in critical condition. According to Lafayette Principal Chris Early, as of Monday afternoon, Steele was in the Intensive Care Unit on life support.

Early said staff at Lafayette are doing everything they can to take care of students.

“The staff here really is a family… our teachers are just absolutely exceptional, not just our teachers for that matter, all of staff members – secretaries, counselors, teachers – are exceptional at understanding what our students need and kind of reading the mood of our building,” Early said. “First period was kind of quiet when the bell first rang and then you could just slowly see a trickle of kids heading to the counseling center… and that’s what we’ve done all morning long, we’ve just had our counseling center open and kids have been able to come in as needed and visit with people and, I think, in that sense, things are going as smoothly as one could expect.”

Early said this is the second car accident in about a year that has taken the life of a student.

Early said, through it all, he’s appreciative of the Northside community.

“We’ve had a lot of people reaching out to us (Monday). There’s been a lot of food delivered, we had a local church bring in Kleenexes and waters and it’s just nice to know that we have such a tight-knit community that has our back and will support us when we need it,” Early said.

There is no information yet on the cause of the crash, but police say speed was a contributing factor.

(UPDATE) Area law enforcement conducted an overnight operation which resulted in several arrests.

According to Captain Jeff Wilson with the St. Joseph Police Department, the goal of the joint operation was to locate and stop vehicles fleeing from officers.

Wilson said area law enforcement agencies involved included the Buchanan County Sheriff’s Department, Missouri State Highway Patrol, Buchanan County Drug Strike Force with outlying support from Elwood, Doniphan County and Andrew County Sheriff Departments.

“It was very well-thought out, very well-planned. It went from the late evening hours into the early morning hours and we would just say that the operation was a success,” Wilson said. “There were vehicles that did flee from officers, these vehicles were tracked by air assets and there were arrests made as a result of this operation.”

Wilson said there were five arrests made as a result of suspects fleeing from officers. Wilson said vehicles flee from officers during normal or investigative traffic stops and some that flee from officers may do so because a suspect is driving a stolen vehicle.  

“Our officers made us very aware of the fact that a lot of vehicles are fleeing from them. This presents a danger not only to the citizens, as far as the driving of these suspects when they flee in their vehicles, but also it speaks to the fact that they are normally involved in some sort of criminal behavior that we’re trying to stop them for anyway,” Wilson said. “(We orchestrated) an operation with this much planning and safety involved in it, to hopefully have somewhat of an affect on these suspects choosing to flee from us, that’s kind of what the premise is behind this. Much like doing a special operation for narcotics or anything along those lines, we saw a problem and we implemented some planning to address that problem.”

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(7:56 a.m. Friday) The St. Joseph Police Department made several arrests overnight due to a joint operation.

According to Sgt. Wayne Byrom with the police department, the operation between 8 p.m. and 2 a.m. focused on stolen vehicles and vehicles fleeing from officers.

Around 9:30 Thursday night, police were following a car on 16th Street when the vehicle attempted to get away. The driver lost control of the vehicle and crashed into another vehicle parked outside a home. Two people in the vehicle were taken to the hospital for treatment of non-life threatening injuries.

More information on the results of the joint operation will be released later Friday.

St. Joseph Police are searching for two suspects after a robbery at a convenience store Tuesday night.

According to Sgt. Brett Kelley with the police department, at 10:30 p.m., two black males entered the World Liquor and Tobacco Convenience Store at 3002 North Belt, displayed handguns and demanded money from the register. Both left on foot with an undisclosed amount of cash and the store clerk’s cell phone.

Anyone with information is asked to call the TIPS Hotline at (816) 238-TIPS.