![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/McHugh_2061edit.jpg\")
For most of my professional career, I have been employed in\naviation education. This causes me to regularly reflect on best practices and\nwhat is most effective. Often educational outreach events have quantity <\/em>OR quality<\/em>. I have seen events in which there are hundreds or\nthousands of kids and events with just a few. I\u2019ve been a part of events\ndesigned to get students interested in careers in aviation and others designed\nto provide education on the skills of being a pilot, mechanic, etc. So, what\nworks? What is the \u201cbest\u201d way to provide aviation education? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Recently I visited with the organizers of KidVenture while\nat OshKosh. I am amazed at how well this event is run. With thousands of young\npeople coming through, it would be easy to fall into the trap of \u201cthere are\nlots of kids, if we do something, we are bound to get a few interested.\u201d\nThis could not be further from the truth for KidVenture. There is planning,\nnearly year-round, for this one event. There is coordination of needed\nsupplies, labor to man the stations, gathering sponsorships, and lots more!\nWhen taking a minute to stand back and watch kids leaving Kidventure, they all\nhave a look of excitement and inspiration in their eyes. True, not all will\nbecome mechanics, or pilots, or even go into the industry, but guaranteed they\nhad a memorable time. So what makes the event so well run? My non-scientific\nresearch has driven me to one conclusion; this event makes connections with\nstudents, both physically and mentally, now and in the future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The connections: when a child enters a station at this\nevent, they are either working one-on-one with an instructor, or in a small\ngroup of no more than a few other students. With the small group sizes, they\nare engaged mentally with the activity for the entire time they are there. Next,\nthey are connected physically, as each station has a HANDS-ON activity. They\nare physically doing something at each station. Examples include, flight\nplanning, pre-flight, air traffic control simulation, turning wrenches on an\nengine and building a wing rib out of wood. Finally, just being at AirVenture\nis an immersive experience in which these students are connecting with aviation\nin the now\u201c\u2026 but are they in the future? At many of the stations at KidVenture,\nstudents get something to take home, and in most cases, they created it!\nSomething to hang on the wall and reflect on in the future. This continues the\nlearning process long after the event. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So, what makes a good educational event? Connections! An\nevent that connects with students physically and mentally and gives them a way\nto re-connect with the event in the future is one of the most effective ways to\nprovide an education. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Although this takes lots of time and effort in the planning\nprocess, the more connections that our young people have to our industry, the\nless we will have to worry about a shortage of labor in the future. We may\nnever know the impact of any one event for young people, but the more\nconnections we make, I can guarantee, the less we will have to worry about\nattracting talent in the future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Mike McHugh is the Education Coordinator for the ND Aeronautics Commission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Mike McHugh Given the state of today\u2019s aviation industry, it’s hard not to get excited about sharing aviation with young people in hopes of inspiring them to join our aviation workforce. It seems like the demand for pilots, mechanics, UAS operators, etc. just continues to rise, with no sign of slowing down in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation-education","category-north-dakota"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13508"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13510,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13508\/revisions\/13510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}