Camp explores fun science
Megan Strickland
Kyran Kenison concentrates during a brain wave exercise at a GearUp science camp at Arlee High School.
Megan Strickland
Riley Riffle plays with a brain model at GearUp Science camp.
Megan Strickland
Megan Strickland
GearUp Science Camp in Arlee
Megan Strickland
GearUp Science Camp in Arlee
Megan Strickland
Kyran Kenison concentrates during a brain wave exercise at a GearUp science camp at Arlee High School.
Megan Strickland
Kyran Kenison concentrates during a brain wave exercise at a GearUp science camp at Arlee High School.
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ARLEE — Jessie Girsch squinted his eyes with determined concentration upon a small blue ball floating above the plastic obstacle course. He clenched his fists, contorted his face into a grimmace and let out a cry of disappointment as the ball, instead of advancing forward into a two-inch high tunnel, plummeted off the table and into the bookshelves of the Arlee High School Library.
A group of cheering teenagers then swarmed the boy and tried to get their chance at wearing the black headband lined with sensors to read brain waves and levitate the ball forward through the obstacle course.
The students’ excitement about the science experiment marked success for the weeklong science day camp hosted last week by the federally funded Montana GearUP program, which aims to increase the number of first-generation and low-income students who pursue college.
“You get to an age where science is less fun,” said Hannah Motl, outreach director of spectrUM at the University of Montana. “You start to do lab reports. It begins to get harder. So reminding students that it can still be fun in a way that is hands-on is important. It can go either way at this age. You are either into it, or you aren’t.”
Instructors kept students interested by tossing aside the traditional textbook teaching method. Instead, students worked on circuitry, completed small engineering tasks, dissected sheep brains, cooked nutritious snacks and visited a microbiology lab at the University of Montana.
“We take a question and answer approach. Instead of giving them the answers and having them memorize them, we really try to present them with a question or a problem and have them find the answer on their own,” educator and University of Montana student Lindsay Jones said.
GearUP college access manager Paula Roe said this year is the first year the program held camps outside of Missoula by partnering with high schools and tribal colleges in Arlee, Harlem, and Browning.
Camper Zeke Lafromboise of Missoula said the experiments were worth sacrificing sleeping in during summer vacation.
“I had to get up at five in the morning to get here,” Lafromboise said. “It’s almost like a field trip every day.”
Thompson Falls camper Kyran Kenison said he wanted to attend the University of Washington’s engineering program before he went to the camp, but actually liked exploring a different branch of science the most.
“It was interesting to see what was in the brain and what it looked like,” Kenison said. “We had done sheep eyes at school, but this was more interesting because the brain controls your whole body.”
Alec White of Thompson Falls said he didn’t expect to enjoy the camp, but loved creating a “jitterbug” robot out of an electronic toothbrush motor.
“Science is kind of boring to me, but these guys made it fun,” White said.
