Thank you for the Utah Fits All Scholarship Program. It has provided enormous opportunities and funding for my family to do things we could not afford on our own.
I have two daughters, aged 15 and 12. The oldest, Clara, used the scholarship this year to increase her music education. Clara has been the lead singer in a rock and roll band, auditioned for and earned solos in her performance choir, and began working on the underscore of an animated tv series, which she is animating on her iPad. The scholarship provided the necessary technology to accomplish this, as well as paid for lessons and classes. She also maintains rigorous math and science studies at home, and we used scholarship money to purchase a chemistry class with hands-on experiments.
Elizabeth used her scholarship funds to take amazing local social studies classes, and explore with STEAM kits. She dances on a local ballroom dance team where the team coach wrote the syllabus standards for cabaret dance in the Olympics. We could not have imagined this caliber of instruction without the UFA scholarship. Elizabeth used some of her funds to get an iPad, where she writes weekly papers for her history class. She struggled with writing in the past, and the technology has made it easier for her to write her thoughts using the voice to text feature. This feature has helped her learn to spell new words and Google docs helps her correct grammar mistakes. It makes writing a “learn by doing” event instead of something hard and dreaded. She is an entrepreneur and has also been using the funds to create a website to market products for a business she started. She makes small polymer clay jewelry pieces and sells them to her friends at local homeschool market days.
Thank you for this opportunity for our children. I hope you will consider expanding it for more families to benefit from the educational freedom and ability for children to explore their individual interests. I also hope the scholarship will encourage more entrepreneurship education in the future, as these amazing kids will do great and innovative things when given the opportunities to make the world a better place.
