Program links 'fly day' with academic goals

Wright Flight grad earns her wings Hop into the back seat of a vintage Piper Tri-Pacer airplane as 11-year-old Wright Flight graduate Lindsey Mueller takes the controls... Begin presentation »» Sign up today For more information on participating in Wright Flight or to become a sponsor, call 294-0404, log on to www.wrightflight.org or e-mail sysadmin@wrightflight.org.

You can fly a plane.
But it takes weeks of work, a commitment and a high test score. The payoff is a chance to copilot a plane with the assistance of an experienced pilot.

Tucson's own Wright Flight program gives students a chance to fly after achieving an academic goal.

"We wanted to motivate kids through aviation," said Lt. Col. Robin Stoddard, who began the Wright Flight program in Tucson in 1986. "We hope to turn out fine community members and help students learn to set goals and make something of themselves in life."

Stoddard, an Air Force Reserve fighter pilot, said he used the Wright brothers as aviation role models. "If the experts thought anybody was doomed to fail, it was the Wright brothers," he said.

Instead, they changed the course of history with the first flight on Dec. 17, 1903.

That fact and many others are what students learn in the nine-week Wright Flight program - taught in schools in seven states. Wright Flight has graduated 9,000 students nationwide since the program began, Stoddard said.

"We learned about how the first flight happened and how aviation has grown," said Wright Flight participant Brett Gudeman, a fifth-grader at Desert Willow Elementary on Tucson's Southeast Side.

Sarah Duranti, 10, said studying in the Wright Flight program has inspired her to become a pilot and then an astronaut. "We learned how the Wright brothers had to work together and now that's my dream - to be able to go up really high in the sky."

On a recent Saturday morning, 12 students in Richard Connet's Desert Willow fifth-grade class turned out for a briefing and a turn to be a copilot.

Those who made it to "fly day" had studied hard, scored 85 percent or better on a written exam on what was taught during the nine weeks and achieved an academic goal after signing a business-like contract saying they would do so.

Connet said an example of a student's academic goal is raising a specific grade in math. His students tried very hard, he said, but only 12 of the 19 in his class advanced to fly day.

Students get a chance to control the plane for 25 to 35 minutes during fly day. An experienced pilot guides them through turns, climbs and dives at speeds up to 150 mph.

Wright Flight offers three programs: the Minute Man program for fourth- and fifth-grade students; the history of aviation program for sixth- to 12th-graders; and the Voyager program, a navigation program for students in grades seven to 12.

«« Back