Washington Highlight: Aviation High School
Raisbeck Aviation High School (Highline School District) has around 400 students and is a public school of choice in Washington State. The following is a Q&A with Therese Tipton, the principal at this unique school, based on the campus on Washington’s Museum of Flight.
How does the museum support your school’s educators?
In dozens of different ways. The dream and vision of this partnership started in 2003, and the first graduating class was the class of 2007. We’ve been housed on the museum’s campus for almost five years. Right away, our teachers ensure that our kids make connections with the museum. We don’t have a library but we have access to the full museum archives and the museum itself — in fact our students have full-access all year. They work with archivists, community members, industry professionals and more. Our social studies teacher, for example, uses the museum during a Project-based Learning (PBL) activity, called “living history.” The students go to the museum and research and act out figures from a different time period, such as the 1920’s.
What kinds of opportunities do students have because of your partnership?
We have walking field trips to the museum all the time, we really value the historical pieces, there’s English Language Arts pieces, and we have docents and mentors that help make our students’ learning robust. And there are opportunities for students to volunteer for community service and internships. Students can do a variety of things for the museum. The museum runs camps in the summer around aeronautics and various focuses. We host related classes on our campus during the year. We like to make things interactive so our students might be interning with the docents, or the historical archivists.
I came from a traditional school before this and I’ve been here for two years. It’s so different, but it’s incredible. When I ask kids what the most impactful things that have happened in their time here, the majority of graduates will tell me, internships, mentorships, and community-based relationships such as the museum, are the most important.
How did this all begin?
Reba Gilman worked for Highline Schools in a skills center and she noticed students coming in with an interest in aviation and aerospace, and thought, wouldn’t it be cool if there were a school that fostered that interest? We have well over 200-aviation related businesses in our backyard, so she reached out to local companies. Early on, the school was in Highline School District physically, but it grew and the new building was designed. It was named for James Raisbeck (a Boeing engineer and founder of Raisbeck Aviation). A lot of people came together and said, we’ll support this. The school is really a three-way connection between our high school, the museum, and the greater aviation industry.
How do you foresee the relationship growing moving forward?
We always want more interactive opportunities for our students with docents and mentors. The museum also hosts several big events, for example, students can volunteer for the Pathfinders event (this is when industries honor two people that have contributed to aviation and aerospace, like Jeff Bezos, Phil Condit, or astronaut Pinky Nelson). Our students help with that black tie event. They enjoy the networking and get to have dinner with industry leaders, museum officials and college representatives. It’s outstanding. I always hear people say, I wish this could be replicated.
It’s really important to recognize our staff of educators. They are really involved, they go above and beyond to ensure that the students have these opportunities that are community-driven. We have a staff-run Community Connections team that purposefully looks for ways to increase our relationship with the museum. The museum offers after school classes for more credits, if students wish, too. It’s the teachers, they make a huge difference.
