Inspiring and engaging professional development
TEACHERS AIR CAMP
The Teachers Air Camp experience is an exciting and rigorous adventure for all who participate. Participants remember why they became a teacher all over again by working together to master a fun and challenging curriculum. The carefully designed experiences illuminate options that are available for students in the STEM fields after graduation and emphasize how principles of STEM can be infused into almost any lesson to enhance the learning process.
Making education an adventure
CURRICULUM
Educators will participate in a variety of engineering design challenges and learn innovative ways to infuse science, technology, engineering, and math into their lessons from STEM professionals at a variety of affiliated sites for up to fifteen hours each day.
Just like the student participants, they are provided unique access to aviation and aeronautics sites that promote creativity, productivity, and full engagement. The broad spectrum of events includes receiving expert instruction about the physics of flight, the opportunity to explore behind the scenes at the Dayton International Airport, and ultimately being able to pilot a small aircraft at a local airport under the direction of an FAA certified instructor.
Additionally, waypoints are provided throughout the experience. Each one allows teachers from similar grade bands representing a variety of content subjects to collaborate and develop ideas about lessons, units, and resource acquisitions in creative ways focusing on the values of scholarship, leadership, and citizenship.
The ultimate goal is for teachers to return to their classrooms with a newfound perspective of how to demystify the STEM fields for their students, build self confidence in their abilities, and encourage their curiosity. By encouraging students to effectively analyze each failed attempt as a means to discover the correct answer they can help shape collaborative leaders who will succeed in STEM career fields in the future.
Targeted training yields years of benefits
HIGHLIGHTS
- Enhancing the significance of the engineering design process during hands-on learning modules
- Designing lessons aligned with key national academic standards in the STEM fields and beyond
- Accumulating years of benefits for students in only two-and-a-half-days
- Networking with professionals in the STEM fields about skills, content, and resources students need to be exposed to in order to achieve in related careers
- Contributing to a collective, technology-based sharing of ideas that can be accessed by all participants beyond the training experience
- Engaging in flight ground school with some programs permitting flying as a student pilot at a local airport
- Exploring aviation heritage and affiliated sites as resources for their classrooms
- Investigating careers and procedures on-site
NATIONAL TEACHERS AIR CAMP
The Teachers Air Camp program is partially funded by individual, organizational, and/or corporate donors. All interested teachers are required to apply through the online application. However, ALL selected teacher participants are subject to pay a $100.00 non-refundable registration fee during the registration process (as applicable) after being notified of their invitation to attend from the selection committee. The registration fee helps to off-set a small portion of the costs incurred by Air Camp, Inc. in the event that a registered attendee must later withdraw his/her intent to participate.
What is included in the program?
- All course instruction, activities, and events
- Digital access to STEM lessons, engineering design challenges, and resources for students K-12
- Optional lodging at a designated area hotel
- Select Meals
- Flight suit and selected equipment
- Official Air Camp coin
- Official Air Camp patch
- Private bus transportation to and from all events throughout the experience
- Official Air Camp log book to record flight time
- One-on-One flight instruction as a student pilot in a general aviation aircraft
Is Air Camp right for me?
GENERAL REQUIREMENTS
- Applicants must be currently licensed, practicing educators in grades K-12 teaching one or more of the content areas of science, technology, engineering, and/or math.*
- All selected participants must formally commit to participation in the experience no less than 30 days prior to the start date of the event.
- Participants must be willing to engage respectfully and positively in all activities.
- Applicants will be notified of all expectations of their participation within the application and are required to commit to the fulfillment of all expectations in order to be under formal consideration for selection.
- Participants must be capable of independently standing, walking, sitting, climbing (stairs) for extended periods of time for up to fifteen hours a day.
* All U.S. citizens across the world will be eligible for consideration at this time. If you would like to be notified of future teacher programming, sign up to receive notifications and updates.