About

Take Flight is a four-year project currently in its third year of development. We're collaborating closely with a select group of teachers to co-design, refine, and test the curriculum. If you’ve come across this website and would like to explore the curriculum, we’d love to hear from you! Please send us an email and let us know if you're using it and share your experience with us.

Our Objectives

To Expand the Message about STEM

Communal values are inherent in STEM occupations.
STEM skills include communal, collaborative skills.
To increase the motivation of female students to pursue STEM goals in rural communities, messages about STEM must be delivered in new ways, to include communal goals, specifically those that are collaborative and/or altruistic.

To Use Drones as a Disruptive and Multidisciplinary Tool

Drones can challenge and change how students look at the skills needed for success in STEM.
Drones can teach specific technology and science concepts.
Drones can introduce students to a wide variety of STEM careers.
Drones can focus on the cognitive knowledge and skill development necessary to fly drones by introducing students to the key STEM concepts assessed in the FAA Part 107.
Drones can support coding skills. In Take Flight, students will learn to code autonomously flying drones, increasing their confidence and competence related to STEM.

To Employ a Strengths-based Approach to Mitigate Stereotype Threat

Incorporate strength-based self-affirmation practices proven effective for mitigating stereotype threat.
Help young women develop a positive STEM identity, we need to address stereotypes related to both cultural fit for a field and ability; “women may worry both that they do not fit the image of a STEM person and that they do not have the ability to succeed in STEM”.
Develop communal skills, integrated with diversity training, that are proven to increase equity in STEM.
Help learners develop cognitive skills related to occupational identity by providing frameworks and activities for discussing their interests, strengths, and aspirations related to a future career and showing them real-world options connected to academic pathways.

Why Drones?

Link STEM and CTE: They introduce students to viable educational pathways.
Embed career exploration: They expose students to a variety of applications ranging from geographic mapping to weather forecasting, shipping and delivery, disaster management, and wildlife monitoring.
Challenge the stereotypes: The drone labor force is still new enough that STEM stereotypes have yet to be fully established.

Learn more about Universal Design for Learning

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is the foundational framework for Take Flight, ensuring that all students find the learning engaging and meaningful. Learn more with this introductory video and visit CAST.org for more resources and courses.

Throughout the Take Flight slide deck, you will see UDL moves embedded to help better implement UDL in your instruction.