Diana Bettino - Retirement

Diana began her education at Wellington Elementary, where she remembers getting into trouble with her first grade teacher, Mrs. Olson, for drawing other classmates artwork for them.  By sixth grade, her teacher and principal Mr. Stephens, allowed her to decorate the halls and the cafeteria with large holiday characters colored in chalk pastels. Diana moved on to Mont Harmon Jr. High where the anticipation of taking an actual art class was high.  To her dismay, the experience at Mont Harmon was less than desirable.  Moving on to Carbon High, she finally was able to dabble in many art mediums involving a variety of subject matter through the guidance of Mr. Leavitt.     

After graduating from Carbon, she married and had three children.  Later divorcing, her childhood dream of being an artist took precedents and encouraged her to get a degree.  With her youngest being only twenty-two months and her oldest starting kindergarten, she began her journey to become a trained artist, an art educator, and still be a mom full time.  After receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts in the spring of 1988 from Utah State University, she later joined the ranks alongside teachers of her own junior high years at Mont Harmon.  Teachers, such as Mrs. Milovich, Mrs. Johnson, Mr. Dupin, Mr. Powell, Mr. Bikakis and others.  Diana started out as a part-time art teacher her first year, then into full-time the following year, splitting her days for four years between Mont Harmon and Westridge Middle.  She came to realize, her years as a student at Mont Harmon, was beneficial in giving her the drive to provide her students with a strong and in depth art curriculum to create art, develop skills and gain an appreciation for the arts.

Diana was able to teach at Mont Harmon full days for two years and took on being the Yearbook Advisor for the next 10 years.  During this time, she and Mr. Hoyt decided that the choir room needed a mural on that extremely, huge, boring, blank, back wall.  Involving her advanced art students, they drew caricatures of composers from Giovanni Palestrina to John Rutter.  Her advance art students were also involved with painting interior castle scenes on bed sheets for the Annual Renaissance Fair, led by Mr. Cha and Mr. Hoyt.  This backdrop grew for the next several years.  In 1995, she returned to split days, Helper Jr. in the morning and Mont Harmon in the afternoons.  Diana played musical buildings as she called it, for another seven years.  Her second year at Helper Jr., Principal Montoya asked her to take on a mural, painting the tunnel under the highway that led to the stairs up the hill behind Helper Jr. High.  With her students, they painted abstract designs on two walls, each one being a hundred feet long.  In 2002, she was able to be back at Mont Harmon full time, where she has remained to teach for the rest of her thirty-three years.  Diana has truly enjoyed teaching the very thing that she loves to do most, creating art and sharing that knowledge and skill with her students.   Before Covid, she began another mural at Mont Harmon with only the help of her granddaughter Kayle.  They began to paint a forty-foot, long, wall, interpreting a timeless pirate theme, of the school, ā€œCā€ hill, a ship, and a treasure map.  Diana is brushing on the last strokes as she prepares to leave Mont Harmon permanently.  Hoping to leave a legacy, Ms. Bettino has left the building!