Classroom clipper, Vol. XVI, No. 1, October 1959

              OCTOBER 1959
Published by Pan American World Airways
VOL. XVI, No. 1
A Visiting Fireman Reviews The Notes He Took On a Circuit of Aviation Education Workshops
by George Gardner
The purpose of an aviation education workshop is to indoctrinate teachers in the fundamentals of aviation so they can integrate these concepts into social studies, geography, the sciences and other subjects.
Techniques include lectures, demonstrations, study of texts and other printed materials, including industry-sponsored materials, evaluation of audio-visual aids, laboratory projects such as the building and flying of model airplanes, and one other, which provides the frame of reference for this report, namely the visiting fireman pattern.
The visiting firemen (workshoppers frequently do us the honor of referring to us as V.I.P.’s) represent the air transport and aviation manufacturing industries, the U. S. Air Force, including the Civil Air Patrol, the Federal Aviation Agency, the National Aviation Education Council, and others. These characters range across the country to appear before the aviation education workshop groups to contribute knowledge of their specialties, also to get fresh viewpoints for themselves so that they can do a better job of preparing aviation education materials.
Pan Am’s Educational Director has been included among these peripetic specialists for several years, along with such practitioners as Ray Mertes of United Air Lines, John Furbay of TWA, Mervin Strickler of Civil Air Patrol, Evan Evans of the National Aviation Education Council and others.
(Note: There will be considerable name dropping in this report; that is one reason for composing it. If you are interested in aviation education, every name you will encounter herein will be a potential source of information and assistance. . . . The report also is offered as a matter of interest to teachers who participated in workshops this summer, and as a means of encouraging other teachers to sign up next summer. At least we hope it will work out that way.)
More than forty aviation education workshops held sessions during the summer of 1959 — your correspondent participated in ten. Since most of the workshops are scheduled at about the same time, that is about as many as one person can visit.
The itinerary accomplished is a perfect example of the contribution of air transportation to expeditious business travel, i.e., the saving of time that air travel affords and the consequent increase in the number and variety of missions which may be undertaken in a given number of days or weeks.
The Itinerary
Proceeding out of New York through the midwest on a devious routing, then to the Pacific Northwest, the Pacific Coast and back through Minneapolis and Chicago I was en route for 38 days, and this was only 26 school or business days, mind you. The stops included not only the ten workshops, but also attendance at the N.E.A. convention in St. Louis, the National Model Airplane Championships at the U. S. Naval Air Station, Los Alamitos, California, and a series of calls upon representatives of Pan American in various cities.
Try carrying out a travel program like that in any way except by air!
Air lines used included American, Braniff, Delta, Eastern, Northwest, TWA, United and Western. The list would have included Pan American had I been able to get to Roland Spaulding’s University of Alaska aviation education workshop at Elmendorf Air Force Base, but this just wouldn’t fit into the scheduling. Some legs were flown in Air Force aircraft flown by Civil Air Patrol Liaison Officers. One journey, to make an air line connection, was accomplished during a crosscountry flight for a pair of students in the flight instruction program at the National Workshop, as will appear in more detail below.
A trip to the workshop at the Teachers College at Plattsburgh, New York, was completed in a single day, from New York City [Continued, on page T-2)
ELLENSBURG, WASHINGTON — At the Aviation Education Workshop, Central Washington College of Education: Left to right, Workshop Director Coral Bloom, Work-shopper Mary Moore, Visiting Fireman George Gardner, Workshoppers Beverly Bony and Chester Torgerson. The project is aircraft model building.
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