Reaching Through Reading
FAA engineers and technicians visited classrooms to share their favorite aviation-themed children’s books.
By Jim Tise, FAA
The FAA’s William J. Hughes Technical Center is one of the world’s leading aviation research facilities. As such, it depends on a steady stream of engineers and other technology-savvy employees to continue its mission.
So it made complete sense for employees in the center’s STEM Aviation and Space Education (AVSED) program to participate in “Read Across America,” an annual event sponsored by the National Education Association that focuses on motivating children and teens to read.
FAA employees fanned out across the Atlantic City, NJ area to read aviation- and STEM-related books in 31 classrooms, a local library, and a homeschool co-op.
“I think it’s extremely important to help the next generation decide whether to be an engineer or a technologist,” said Holly Cyrus, an FAA mechanical engineer for 33 years before joining the center’s STEM AVSED team three years ago. Cyrus herself decided to become an engineer after a visit by University of New Mexico engineers to her high school class 40 years ago. “[That type of outreach] is powerful — it changes lives,” she said.
Cyrus spent four months researching more than 40 books before she and fellow panel members settled on three titles:
- “Jabari Tries” (ages K-1st grade) is about a little boy who wants to build a flying machine in his back yard. Through perseverance and with assistance from his father and little sister, he succeeds;
- “Nobody Owns the Sky,” (2nd-4th grades) which is a story about aviation pioneer Bessie Coleman; and
- “An Engineer Like Me,” (4th — 5th grades) in which an inquisitive young girl learns from her grandmother how things work, including how planes fly.
Alex Konkel, an engineering research psychologist with the FAA, read “Nobody Owns the Sky” to two 4th grade classes and “Jabari Tries” to his daughter’s 2nd grade class. “The 2nd graders really seemed to like how Jabari worked through different approaches — a ramp, some fizzy stuff, and then wings — and finally succeeded,” he said.
Computer Scientist Stephanie Stead read “An Engineer Like Me” to two fifth-grade classes.
“The students were all very inquisitive and loved sharing their own stories that related to various parts of the book, but I received the most questions once we started discussing airplanes and how they fly,” she said.
Stead even caught the teachers following along as she read, “so it wasn’t just the kids who were interested!”
Indeed, the educational aspects of Read Across America cut both ways.
The FAA’s STEM AVSED program allows Ron Garbutt, an air traffic software engineer and former teacher, to continue to teach from time to time. “As an ambassador, I have mostly been able to contribute to high school math and computer science classrooms, sharing my technical expertise while relating what I do back to their curriculum,” he said. “Reading to elementary students was a unique and new experience in a completely different classroom subject area.”
The reading sessions were often followed by hands-on activities.
“We built paper airplanes after reading the book and they naturally notice how some of the planes fly differently from each other,” said Konkel. “We talked about how they were shaped a little differently and how that might matter.”
The William J. Hughes Technical Center has a long history with STEM outreach; it has about 100 outreach representatives on its staff.
“We’ve been building this program for the last six to seven years,” said Lyndsay Digneo, who manages the center’s STEM outreach program. To date, the center has established 300 points of contact with schools ranging from kindergarten through 12th grade.
“Read Across America was a great opportunity for our STEM AVSED program to be part of a nationwide educational initiative,” said Digneo.
If you are interested in incorporating aviation STEM lessons into your classroom, go to faa.gov/education/ to find resources for educators.
