Beth White ‘03 (New England, MS) has been doing amazing work with Big Picture Learning, an organization that helps schools center youth around their learning by sending young people out two days a week to work alongside adults in areas of their interest. They then build a curriculum around these interests.
After getting her pilot’s license, White looked around the airport and realized she was the only woman there. She had been driving past an enormous warehouse at the entrance of Franklin County State Airport and wondered if it could be turned into a hangar. Now, White is launching a capital campaign to turn the building into a world class facility that trains youth and adults to become the next generation of airplane mechanics and pilots.
White ordered a kit to build an S-21, which is a two-seat high-wing airplane, and for the first time in history a group of women and girls are constructing an airplane.
In the PBS video about her work on this project called How these teenagers are helping create a work-based school experience, White says, “My work in the world is to start asking the really tough questions about conventional school and how we can do things differently.” The video is one story from PBS’s Brief But Spectacular collection on the future of education.
