Linden Avenue Middle School

The Future Flyers is a club open to seventh and eighth grade students during lunch periods on Day 3 of the rotation cycle, which utilizes Linden Avenue Middle School’s two flight simulator units in the technology education classroom. The sixth grade flight and space class likewise uses the simulators.

“We want to get kids excited about something new that could possibly lead into a career or a hobby,” technology education teacher Jen Melitski said. “We know that there’s a pilot shortage right now. The more people we can get interested in this industry is great.

“We talk in sixth grade about all the vocabulary that’s associated with flight – the lift, the thrust, the weight, the drag – and trying to get all those different pieces and parts,” she said, “but it’s different when you’re actually sitting and using a real plane.”

During club periods, students take five-minute turns on the flight simulators, using the yoke, rudder pedals and observing the instruments on large, high-definition screens. The simulators offer several different types of planes to use with more available, and they fly over real maps. Everyone who uses the simulators will also make entries into a flight log to track their experience.

Melitski obtained a grant from The SIA Foundation, which stands for Students In Aviation, to purchase one simulator and the district purchased another. The nonprofit SIA Foundation, founded in 2016, has donated more than 100 simulators to schools across the country to fulfill its mission to “ignite a passion for aviation and aerospace” and introduce “students to the world of aviation. In addition to the grant, SIA helped Melitski set the equipment up and showed her the basics of how to fly.