Entheos Fire Corps students learn and teach fire safety

Lives may be saved in the future, thanks to some service work done by sixth, seventh and eighth grade students at Entheos Academy. As part of the school's Fire Prevention Week, Entheos "Fire Corps" students learned about fire safety from Unified Fire Authority representatives, then taught those same lessons to other children in the Kearns community.

On Oct. 4, the UFA brought a fire trailer and other equipment to the school. Fire trailers use heated doors and rooms that fill with fake smoke to simulate the environment of a house on fire, so students can learn how to avoid the smoke and hot doors, and climb out through windows before they ever encounter a real fire situation. Fire Corps students practiced escaping from the fire truck, navigating obstacle courses, using a small fire hose, and dragging an "unconscious" fireman dummy to safety. Each one of these activities taught them a necessary skill to save themselves and others from fire. Then on Oct. 7, Entheos hosted a free community fire safety event at the Utah Olympic Oval, and the Fire Corps students had the opportunity to teach everything they had learned with the UFA to a wide age range of participants.

"Every 3-year-old you teach might save a life," eighth grader Jessica Ivie said.

The partnership between Entheos and the UFA is unique. The school approached the UFA in May, asking for service opportunities--small things like stuffing envelopes. However, UFA Community Services Specialist Ben Sharer thought they could do more than that, and that they might even be a more powerful force in educating younger children about fire safety than adult firefighters.

"Every kindergartener looks up to the 6th graders," he said.

The Fire Corps program empowers older children to teach younger ones not only how to save themselves and others from fire, but how to help firefighters help them, and to associate firefighters with rescue and not run or hide from them in a real fire situation.

"It's all part of our hands-on service program," said the school's Service Learning Coordinator, Deb Ivie.

Community service is highly emphasized at Entheos, and all students are required to do 30-60 hours of community service closely tied in with their academic curriculum during their sixth grade year. The sixth graders learn all kinds of important skills from their service projects, from writing proposals to graphing their progress, as well as teamwork, public speaking and leadership skills. The seventh and eighth graders involved in the Fire Corps do so as part of an optional leadership program that gives them additional service opportunities.

The Entheos students showed themselves to be articulate and devoted to the Fire Prevention Week projects at every step, Sharer said.

"I'm really impressed by the caliber of kids here," he said.