College students take to the skies to teach science to children

Before takeoff, it could have looked like a daunting challenge for anyone who preferred the big jets over the "puddle jumpers." But once they climbed aboard with the pilots of the 974th chapter of the Experimental Aircraft Association, a group of 17 University of Cincinnati students majoring in early childhood education would learn a lesson that would be hard to forget.

The students took off from the Butler County Regional Airport over the weekend on mostly two-seater aircraft steered by the pilots who volunteered their own personal planes as classrooms, all in a lesson on how to teach the physical sciences via the standards set by the Ohio Department of Education (ODE). The lesson was a field trip for the course, "Integrating Science though the Curriculum," a class for early childhood education majors in the College of Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services.

"My hope was that they could get a concrete experience to take back to their own classrooms and better teach flight to children," says Linda Huether-Plevyak, UC associate professor of early childhood education. The lesson would examine the ODE standards for teaching the physical sciences to children in second or third grades.

Plevyak says it's also a timely lesson for these UC seniors as they currently serve their student-teaching experiences in early childhood classrooms. "This was a lesson on how to teach force and motion, so the students experienced for themselves how the wind under the plane makes it lift and how it accelerates," Plevyak explains. "I thought some of the ideal 'teachers' for this lesson would be the pilots themselves. Some of these pilots serve the National Guard and others were Vietnam War pilots," Plevyak says. "There were eight unique planes. Some of them were refurbished and some were hand built by the pilots."

"It was an awesome flying experience," says 22-year old Kirby Doran, a UC senior from Columbus, Ohio. "I couldn't believe I did it. I get nervous on commercial flights and here I am, stepping onto a wing to climb into the plane!

"I learned a lot about riding on air," Doran continues. "The pilot explained that if a propeller quits, the plane doesn't just nosedive like in the movies. Because of the force, the plane actually continues to glide on air, but of course without the propellers, the landing is much shakier."

Doran adds that she wants to convert what she learned into a classroom lesson with paper airplanes, showing how air can keep the paper airplane afloat. And to think decades ago paper airplanes were forbidden! "You could also apply this lesson to how birds fly," says Doran, who is student teaching third grade at Kilgour Elementary in Hyde Park.

"I don't remember the last time I was in a plane. I was just a little kid," adds 21-year-old Lindsay Pryor of Mason, Ohio. "It was such a different experience being up in the sky and thinking about a lesson, compared with being down on the ground. It gave me ideas on mapping, and how things can look so different from the air. I'm also thinking about how to teach environmental lessons. It was amazing seeing the layers of clouds when I was actually riding through them in the air," Pryor says. She's student teaching third grade at Hopewell Elementary School in West Chester.

Plevyak, meanwhile, says that because both the students and the pilots got so much enjoyment out of the flying field trip, she hopes to make it an annual event for future students enrolled in the course.

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