WinnAero, the aviation and aerospace-themed education nonprofit group, is based at the Laconia Airport and provides STEM educational opportunities for youth. The group also provides a series of teacher workshops for professional development. The next teacher series is scheduled for March. These hands-on workshops, taught by veteran teacher and aerospace educator Dan Caron, will provide science and technology teachers information and skills they can use in their classrooms to teach STEM subjects related to aerospace. Caron will be assisted in this by the President of WinnAero, herself a science teacher, Karen Mitchell.
The workshops, which can be taken individually or in total, are Rockets (March 2), the Space Environment (March 16) and Spacecraft (March 30).
Participating teachers will actually do the hand-on classroom work that they will eventually teach their own students. They will also discover granting opportunities that will help them implement the instruction in their own classrooms. These include the Civil Air Patrol, the Air Force Association, the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics and the National Association of Rocketry. The workshops, while written for middle school teachers can easily be adapted by elementary and high school teachers for their students. Caron will show workshop participants how to adapt each presentation. All sessions will begin at 8:30 a.m. and conclude by 3:30 p.m., and are held in the Terminal Conference Room at the Laconia Airport.
Light refreshments and lunch will be served. Educational materials are provided by the Aerospace Education Center of the Civil Air Patrol. Grants from the AIAA, the Air Force Association and the Wolf Aviation Fund enabled Caron to develop each session. Cost of each of the three sessions is $75 for non-Civil Air Patrol members and $40 for CAP teacher members. As a bonus, non-CAP teacher members will have $35 of their initial $75 payment applied to CAP membership which will entitle them to attend future workshops at the discounted $40 rate. WinnAero will provide all participants with a Certificate of Completion which may be used for professional development purposes.
To register or for more information about the educational outreach of WinnAero, contact Dan Caron at dwcaron@hotmail.com. To learn more about WinnAero, visit winnaero.org.