Recruiting an Expert

I'm still writing in hopes that this material helps people. In this series, I am sharing how I design my STEAM curriculum.   Post #1 - The introduction,  Post #2 - After the topic is chosen,  Post #3 - Wind tunnels, and in this post I discuss a conversation I had with a friend who is an airplane mechanic and former flight instructor.

The logistics of having a guest speaker visit the school is a challenge. Sure, the school is very supportive of having guest speakers. It's simply that I teach nine classes of STEAM stretched over 3 days. I don't want to wear out my resources by asking any volunteer to visit the school for 3 consecutive days. Especially when I know they will have to take time off from work to speak. My plan is to set aside one morning for the visit. I am hoping to have the speaker stay long enough to meet with the fifth and then the fourth grade. The third-grade groups will do something different. I am also planning on asking the other specials teachers if I can have the entire grade level on that day.

I know Jeff from church. Before he moved to the area with his family he spent some time flying airplanes in Alaska and was a flight instructor. He now works at a local airport as an airplane mechanic. Not only does Jeff know a lot about airplanes, but he is also a good storyteller. The students will enjoy learning from him.

I talked to Jeff at a 4th of July barbeque we both attended. I know Jeff likes to barter for things so I asked him if he would speak to my class for a batch of freeze-dried apples. It wasn't difficult for me to convince him. I think I could have convinced him to speak without the apples. 

During our conversation about what he would talk about, he suggested a few activities that I was already planning. I let him know that I was already planning to do those things and wondered if there was something he could teach them that was a little more technical. We talked about the flight simulator, but it's too big. He had other ideas but didn't like the fact that only one or two people could do the activity at a time. I won't need him to visit until late September, so we ended the conversation by saying we would both think about the presentation.

After looking through my books, I was sure I had more materials in my classroom. Yesterday I took a trip to the school and grabbed another stack. One of the books, "Flight, The Hands-On Approach to Science by Make it Work" had the perfect activity. On pages 36-38 the book has instructions to make a rudimentary model cockpit.

The next time I see Jeff I will ask him if he would be willing to talk about controlling the aircraft. I will make sure to cover the parts of an aircraft before he comes so he can spend more time talking about the controls and what they do. Regardless of his decision, I will make this model. If nothing else it will be a good display in the classroom. 

In my next post, I will talk about setting up a paper airplane contest. 

“The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who, in their grueling travels across trackless lands in prehistoric times, looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space, at full speed, above all obstacles, on the infinite highway of the air.” – Wilbur Wright