School helps kids discover talents

KEARNS — The robot is charging across the table, headed for apparent disaster. It bounces off another robot and runs over a third-grader's finger as it zips ever closer to a tumble to the floor. Nine-year-old Carson McKee is close behind, scrambling after it at full trying-not-to-run-in-the-computer-lab speed.

"Sorry," he says, shaking his blond head apologetically as he scoops up the escaped robot. "It's supposed to stop before it runs into things."

Such hubbub is the norm on Tuesday afternoons at Entheos Academy, when math, spelling and history take a back seat to exploration, discovery and trying new things.

"We believe every child is gifted," said Camine Fuhriman, whose full-time job is organizing the fun at the Kearns charter school. "They just need the opportunity to find those gifts."

While McKee and his classmates were giving robotics a whirl Tuesday, other students explored first aid, stage makeup, pottery, personal training, animal handling and paleontology.

Fuhriman brings in local professionals to teach the classes, which last four weeks each.

This month's activities, themed "The Having of Wonderful Ideas," were designed to spark children's curiosity and encourage experimentation, Fuhriman said. Last month — sports month — children tried out water polo, bobsledding, ice skating, tennis and gymnastics.

"I'm not good at everything I try," said Christian Leyva, 8. "But some things I'm good at."

Since the beginning of September, Leyva has been trained in bobsledding, skiing and emergency medical services. But the most important thing he's learned, he said, was "not to be scared to try new things."

Getting comfortable with the unknown is important, but Fuhriman hopes, for some students at least, the classes will do more than that.

"So many people go through life without finding their passion," she said. "I don't want them to do that."

After spending four afternoons studying dinosaurs — in the classroom, at two museums and in the lab of a working paleontologist — 6-year-old Payton Raaum was pretty sure he'd like to grow up to be a dinosaur scientist. He was bubbling over with reasons as he boarded a yellow bus bound for the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point.

"Because there's one dinosaur that can run so fast you can't even catch it," he blurted, too excited, it seemed, to breathe. "Because there's one dinosaur still alive and it's a bird. Because they sometimes find new dinosaurs. And because maybe I could find a new dinosaur."

When it comes to robotics, McKee seemed Friday to have found love. He jumped up and down and shook his whole body in a frenzied impression of a freshly electrocuted robot when he talked about it.

Is engineering his life calling, though?

He didn't know.

"I think I want to try a bunch more stuff before I decide that," he said. "I like trying new stuff."

e-mail: estuart@desnews.com