Education Through Aviation
Education Through Aviation
The On-Line Journal of the Academy of Model Aeronautics Education Committee
ENTERING OUR FIFTHTEENTH YEAR: WHAT WE’VE LEARNED SO FAR
By Gordon Schimmel, Ed.D
Chair, AMA Education Committee
As I write this, the first in a series of articles for our new Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA) Education Committee electronic newsletter, I am struck by how much, we have learned in nearly a decade and a half of service to the Academy. This article would not have been possible to write during the early years of our work and is only now possible because of my experience in working with members of the Committee who have helped develop the educational mission for the AMA.
My growth as a modeler and educator has been enhanced by the AMA professional staff in Muncie, Indiana, as well as my colleagues on the Education Committee; it is remarkable how many talented individuals come together under the AMA banner to offer newcomers an opportunity to participate in the recreational and educational benefits of model aviation. I have served as Chair of the Committee for the past fourteen years and I have been fortunate to work with a dedicated group of capable AMA members. I am indebted to their tutelage and I offer this summary of our work on their behalf. This article, the first in a series, will document what we have accomplished to date and develop a rationale for what needs to be done in the future.
First, a bit about myself: recently, I retired after thirty-one years in public education, the past twenty-one years of which were as superintendent of schools in Mansfield, Connecticut. My interest in working with the Education Committee was because of the AMA’s commitment to helping club members introduce newcomers to the sport and hobby, as well teaching math and science in school classrooms using hands-on activities to introduce more young people to the excitement and potential for life-long learning in model aviation.
The Academy has a unique niche no other organization can fill because our members know model aviation better than any other national organization. The AMA Education Committee can play an important role in serving the needs of our clubs, their members, and the aerospace community to help educate adults and young people through work with our members, schools and community groups.
Some Important History
When the Academy of Model Aeronautics was founded in 1936, the name was chosen by the organization to acknowledge that learning how to build and fly model airplanes was an important part of a young person’s education. During the so-called “Golden Age of Aviation” when the nation’s youth closely followed the achievements of Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart, building small-scale aircraft for competition in local, regional and national flying events was viewed as a logical part of preparation for higher education in a variety of careers.
The Academy in the organization’s name is no less relevant today because a major focus of the sport and hobby of aero-modeling is life-long learning, whether a member is young or simply young at heart. Model aviation has changed dramatically in the last half-century and the more than 2400 chartered AMA clubs have become “communities of learners,” helping members acquire new skills in electronics, mechanical engineering, and aerodynamics, to extend their reach to new horizons of achievement.
The Education Committee’s mission also has not changed since these early days: to inform and educate the public about the powerful impact model aviation has in motivating people of all ages when they accept the challenge of successfully building and flying a model airplane.
After undergoing reorganization in 1995, the AMA’s Education Committee’s primary mission has been to help other aerospace education organizations to extend their reach as well. The world of education is divided into two groups: informal education, i.e., projects and programs that operate outside of the school day, and formal education, i.e., programs that are tailored to the needs of classroom teachers. From the outset, members of the Committee determined that their work would be focused on using the skills and experience unique to the AMA and its members to assist others in informal and formal education projects to make the best use of models as an instructional tool.
Supporting the Work of Others: Two Areas of Focus
From our initial discussions in 1995, we divided the activities of the Academy of Model Aeronautics Education Committee into two major areas: those carried out in an academic classroom, part of what is known as “formal education”; and the extra-curricular activities that are part of the “non-formal education” network of chartered clubs and community groups.
We created projects that work and have been successful in attracting newcomers to the sport, whether through our work with club members or with groups of teachers and students. We have embarked on a few programs that have not been as successful as we would have wished and we documented these experiences carefully, to inform our future work. We are confident that our work will help us have broader impact and raise the visibility of the AMA as a credible educational resource for club members, teachers, students and leaders of community groups throughout the country.
We began to develop our philosophy with two other important decisions: The first was to support the work of other organizations already doing projects in field of aerospace education. Aviation organizations such as the National Aeronautic Association (NAA), the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), the Civil Air Patrol (CAP), the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the National Air and Space Agency (NASA) and the Smithsonian Institution are just a few of the organizations with whom the AMA Education Committee has worked, in addition to the Science Olympiad, numerous aviation and science museums, Boy and Girl Scouts, 4- H Clubs and community groups.
To be sure, some of these activities followed the old adage of making a virtue of necessity because initially, our resources were limited; we firmly believed that by working though existing organizations, the AMA educational program would achieve economies of scale by acting as a resource to these groups to achieve maximum impact within our budget. We knew that many of our members are people with unique talent and we wanted to establish the AMA as a resource to other groups, some of which were having mixed success using models in their programs. To this end, we decided that a major focus would be helping our chartered clubs with programs for adults and young people, to induct newcomers in to the ranks of builders and pilots of model aircraft.
Clinton Valley Council BSA - Aviation Merit Badge Day
The second important decision was to seek ways to make more effective use of flying model aircraft in the school classroom. In school, most of us have built and flown a dart-shaped paper airplane, a decades-old student favorite. However venerable this “classroom classic” might be for its entertainment value, it was unreliable as a teaching tool for math and science. We knew we had to create and field test activities for classrooms using better flying models to produce useful data, linked to national science and math standards. Early on we decided that we needed to focus on what we do best: offering technical assistance to other aerospace educators who want to use model aircraft as an educational tool.
We decided to pursue teachers at conferences they already attend, beginning with an extensive commitment of workshops at National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) conferences throughout the country. This decision was based in part on necessity, because we had limited resources and we needed to “leverage” our work as much as possible through existing organizations. However, this decision also was based in part on our philosophy; we had no desire to attempt to convince teachers to add an AMA aerospace education activities to an already overcrowded instructional day; we knew if we could assist educators with activities to meet local and state standards in science, technology, engineering and math (known in educational circles as STEM topics), we could contribute to creating better educated students and a stronger workforce.
In the next article in this series, I will discuss the details of our programs in “non-formal” education. Our club members historically have been the basis of providing positive experiences and exciting introductions to the world of model aviation newcomers, to increase membership in our organization. The AMA Education Committee is committed to playing a major role in helping the Academy in achieving this important goal.