By Steve Sears

Courtesy of a generous partnership with curriculum from the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), Roxbury High School for the past two years has offered an official Aviation course program for grades 9 to 12.

Mike Gottfried and Chris Blough, both members of the school’s staff of science teachers, are the instructors.

Roxbury Assistant Superintendent of Schools and head of Curriculum Instruction, Dr. Charles Seipp, learned of the program from pilot David Sarkisian, a Delta Airlines pilot and community liaison to Morris Hills High School in Rockaway, who introduced the program at that school. “The curriculum is free from AOPA, and as I listened more, I thought, ‘Wow, this is really an awesome opportunity that we can provide.” Seipp says. He then conferred with Roxbury Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Loretta Radulic, and some Board of Education members about the reasonable potential to roll out the program. “And as we started to talk more about it, Mike and his colleague, Chris, immediately came to mind as science teachers who are not only qualified but could be passionate about building this thing.”

Gottfried says, “His (Sarkisian) hope was to have more schools in the area pick up on the program and carry it out, because obviously there’s a significant need for pilots now, and projecting into the future.”

Now in its third year at Roxbury High School, a total of 55 students take part, 35 in Aviation 1 and 20 in Aviation 2. And the program is reaping benefits. “We’ve had four students that have meaningfully gone through their flight training,” Gottfried says. “All four students are over 20 hours. They’re ranging between 20 and 45 hours right now.”

And, the program is open to those who don’t aspire to be a pilot. “There is a plethora of careers available to students in the aviation industry,” Gottfried says. “That’s one of the things our curriculum really works to include, and that’s kind of a special thanks to AOPA for letting students know that there is a lot more that you can do beyond being a pilot, because you need people on the ground that are able to maintain the pattern. There’s also a lot of different careers just within the maintenance aspect of it. There’s just so many different careers, which I thought was really interesting.” The Aviation program also includes curriculum to properly pilot and utilize various types of drones.

Gottfried and Blough also do their best to take the Aviation program outside the classroom. Gottfried says, “We brought in a New Jersey State Police helicopter, they landed on one of our soccer fields last year, and they’re going to come back again this spring. We have a scheduled trip to Morristown Airport, and that’ll be our first field trip with students outside of the school and that’s simply because of COVID.” The instructors also planned to take their students to Warren County Community College to check out the school’s Unmanned Systems\Drone Technology program.

In addition to the class program, Gottfried and Blough also offer an Aviation Club. “We had a pretty solid turnout for our first year,” Gottfried states. “We have almost 40 students in the club. That’s just providing an opportunity for students to really either further engage with aviation, because obviously there’s only so much time. and we’re limited in what we can do within the classroom day to day simply because of the curriculum and scheduling. But we wanted to open up the Aviation Club for not only our students in the program, but also more specifically for the students not in the program to do one of two things. One, it could be the kid that can’t fit aviation in their schedule, but they are so passionate about it and want to learn more about it and be more engaged with it, or it could be for the students that are somewhat interested but don’t want to commit to what might be intimidating as a four-year program.”

For more information about the Roxbury High School Aviation program, www.roxbury.org/Page/417.