Flight path to the future
“Do any of you want to be pilots one day?” asks Blandy Castro, aviation management and career pilot technology instructor, at Lenoir Community College (LCC).
A group of second graders from Butler Avenue Elementary School starts nodding their heads, and hands shoot up in the air.
Castro is standing beside a full-motion flight simulator and informs the excited students, “Did you know that you can be a pilot at 16 years old? That’s pretty cool, right?”
The instructor explains that at LCC, students learn about the cockpit, its instruments, and different maneuvers using this flight simulator. According to 2024 data from the Federal Aviation Administration’s Aeronautical Center, around 9% of flight instructors are women. These Butler Avenue Elementary students are seeing one of them in action today.
Students form groups of three as Castro invites them to step inside the flight simulator and prepare for takeoff. They take turns behind the wheel and point out different pieces of the control panel, all while sitting on this virtual runway.
This is the third field trip Butler Avenue Elementary has taken to LCC this year, thanks to a Simple Gifts grant. Sarah Lee is a guidance counselor at Butler Avenue Elementary, and said the staff is focused on creating a “college-going culture within our school climate,” and these field trips are a huge piece of that puzzle.
What is AVID, and how does it help students?
Those second graders not in line for the flight simulator are in the same room learning about air compression using darts, or are outside under the wing of an airplane. Next door, some classes are rubbing their hands together, talking about friction, and watching a machine cut metal.
Butler Avenue Elementary has a STEM classroom, so a lot of this language is familiar, and students are inclined to ask questions.
Butler Avenue Elementary is an AVID school, which stands for Advancement Via Individual Determination. Last summer, eleven school employees traveled to Orlando, FL, to participate in a three-day professional development conference that teaches the principles of AVID.
According to the website, AVID’s three key components to strengthen educator impact are “interactive Communities of Practice, an inspiring General Session, and dedicated Site Team time.”
Leaving the AVID summer institute, the team from Butler Avenue Elementary had a clear vision of their unified goals for the year ahead — to get each of their students to a college and increase their vocabulary by providing visual life experiences.
After the last second graders visited LCC, students decorated wooden airplanes at Butler Avenue Elementary and wrote down what they learned visiting the community college’s aviation program. Students then went to first grade classrooms and talked about what they experienced.
Butler Avenue Elementary has nearly 500 first and second grade students. While second graders headed to LCC for this immersive STEM experience, first graders traveled to the University of North Carolina Wilmington for the school’s Ocean Explorer program. Students learned about marine science through hands-on lab and classroom activities.
A larger group of Butler Avenue Elementary educators plans on attending AVID’s institute this summer. Diana Hales, a second grade teacher, says they are already planning for the field trips for next year.
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Editor’s note: The Simple Gifts Fund lives under the umbrella of the Anonymous Trust, which supports the work of EdNC.
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