While many school boards and public school systems throughout the nation have adopted an aviation high school curriculum, very few certified educators possess the credentials necessary to provide…

While many school boards and public school systems throughout the nation have adopted an aviation high school curriculum, very few certified educators possess the credentials necessary to provide instruction and endorse students for the pilot knowledge tests that are the culminating experience of these aviation programs. Similarly, flight instructors and others with the required federal aviation administration (FAA) credentials are rarely certified to teach in a high school classroom. Local school systems in the state of maryland employed just under 60,000 total teachers in 2015.1 U.S. Civil airmen statistics from 2019 indicate a total of 811 ground instructors in the state of maryland, of which only 62 are women. Few, if any, of these individuals hold both state educator and FAA ground instructor certifications. The certification as an FAA ground instructor basic (BGI) is the minimum necessary for the delivery and logging of ground instruction toward the private pilot certification and is necessary for the endorsement of an applicant to take the private pilot airplane (PAR) knowledge test. The goal of this proposal is to support the pilot workforce development efforts of the FAA by developing a program for teacher professional development that will culminate in an engaging aviation experience and educator certification as FAA ground instructors.