Passion for flying starts at a young age, like that of the junior high students in the Pittsburgh Gifted Center. The center provides a variety of courses each year in database design, cartography, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, statistics, business plan design, and flight training. While the courses are elective, each year 100 to 200 seventh and eighth graders choose aviation. From kindergarten through grade 12, 1,000 students participate in the total program. Most travel to the Pittsburgh Gifted Center, while two or three schools offer gifted classes at their locations.
This year’s course was called Math in Aviation, but next year it gets a new title, Come Fly With Me. An advanced course, not yet named, will cover professional aviation. Simulators are used to master the basics and advance to instrument cross-country flight with the aid of an autopilot.
Glenn Ponas, a new (2014) private pilot, said that in the past dozen years more than 20 students have at least taken lessons as they got older. Among the younger ones this year, three have gone on introductory flights at a local airport and six have had their first ride in an airplane—some through EAA’s Young Eagle program. Two took glider lessons as soon as they turned 14.
Seventh-grader Ethan Ewing said the class has helped him persevere. “When I was first learning to do a traffic pattern, I was struggling. I decided to ask Mr. Ponas for help and I chose to keep trying when it was hard to fly. In Math In Aviation 2 I learned how to be an instrument pilot. Since there are less kids in Math In Aviation 2, I learned a whole lot quicker. This class is fun and I learned skills that I can’t learn in any other class.”
Ceu Gomez-Faulk, 14, is inspired to become an air ambulance pilot. “Flight has interested me since my brother took this class five years ago. I was so excited to fly! When I took the first class, it motivated me to get a flight lesson at the Allegheny airport. In the second class, we started learning IFR flight and patterns, such as procedure turns and radio navigation. That’s when I realized just how precise you could navigate using maps. Because of this class, I want to be an air ambulance pilot when I grow up.”
Seventh-grader Alina Milan has always had an interest in flight; two uncles, her father, and grandfather were pilots. “I have practiced flying many times in the Cessna 172, and throughout these flights I have learned about the components of the airplane and the science and math behind the plane. I have an idea of the relief you feel after emerging out of the clouds and seeing the runway directly in front of you.”
Megan Levick, also in the seventh grade, sees the aviation class as a great opportunity. “This class allowed me to be educated in an area that otherwise would be inaccessible to me. I have now considered a career in aviation, which is more possible now that I have already learned so much. Though I haven’t gotten the chance to fly a real plane, that is one of my future wishes. Learning to fly a plane is definitely one of the most unique, exciting, and interesting things that I have ever done.”
The courses offered to gifted students are very much a reflection of the extracurricular activities and hobbies of the teachers. One plans to teach ham radio courses based on his own hobby. Another has expertise in tracking disease, and will offer a course called Zombie Invasion. Budgets assigned to gifted student learning from Pittsburgh-area schools are pooled to buy the necessary resources, like the flight simulators used by Ponas.
Students in the photos are shown controlling an aircraft using a basic scan of the cockpit instruments, and are learning to maintain control while turning. They progressed from that to simulated flights, taking directions from Ponas—who acted as the air traffic controller—and tuned radios, read instrument approach procedure charts, and navigated.
Ponas has his retirement plan, coming into play in five years, figured out. He’ll walk from the classroom into a flight school as an instructor and continue to teach. He’s working on his instrument rating.
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Photography: Glenn Ponas
