Students in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley are stepping back in time and getting a history lesson from veterans with firsthand knowledge.
For more than a decade, students have been visiting the Greenwood Military and Aviation Museum every Wednesday between January and April.
“This is the name of the program, is to show them the technology, giving them an option to make some choices in life about what they see here, because it covers a variety of information,” says program founder Lloyd Graham.
It is thanks to the veterans, who teach them about everything from the theory of flight, to the Cold War era, to aircraft design, engineering and technology.
“Just when you tell them, like, we built 375 aircraft in Amherst, it just boggles their minds,” says flight education instructor Eric Wood.
For the past 12 years, more than 5,000 students have benefited from the flight education program.
“Their interaction with the students, the true life stories that they share with the students, their experiences, their ‘been there, done that’ and that’s something you don’t find in a textbook or an iPad,” says retired teacher Connie Weinberg.
Now, more than nine schools benefit from the two dozen veterans and air force crew who put countless volunteer hours into training, mentoring, and instructing the students.
“It was actually extremely interesting, because they could give firsthand experiences,” says Grade 6 student Griffin Bartlett.
“We would walk around and look at different things that we haven’t seen that much of before, because in the classroom, it’s the same old stuff,” says Grade 6 student Emma Dukeshire.
Congratulations to the Greenwood Military Aviation Museum flight education volunteers, our Maritimers of the Week!
If you know someone deserving of our Maritimer of the Week award, we want to hear about it.
It doesn’t matter how old they are, the nature of the good deed they’ve done, or what part of the region they live in – we want your ideas!
Please send your nomination to:
or
Maritimer of the Week
P.O. Box 1653
Halifax, N.S.
B3J 2Z4
