Aryana Booker-Gamez listened closely as Sgt. Josh Scott told the story of locating a lost child with help from a camera-equipped drone. Hundreds of residents had gathered for Brentwood Borough’s 4th of July celebration, Scott explained, and a young girl had gotten separated from her mother during the community’s crowded 5K race.

In the past, searching for this child might have taken hours. But Scott had launched a drone, which instantly began scanning the crowd. Within two minutes, he said, the girl was found. And within six minutes, she was hugging her grateful mom.

Booker-Gamez, a senior at Woodland Hills, was one of more than a dozen high schoolers who took in this dramatic story at a recent gathering of the Fly Like a Girl (FLAG) drone academy at South Fayette High School.

When Scott finished the story, the students began asking questions about the particular drones the Brentwood Police use and the ways this technology can help keep the public and the officers safe. When he described the challenge of learning to fly a drone indoors — and the inevitable experience of crashing into a wall while learning — the teens nodded in recognition.

Scott spoke to these young women as colleagues, and they actually are: FLAG participants get rigorous training in the theory and practice of drone technology as they prepare to become federally licensed drone pilots.

For Booker-Gamez and the other FLAG participants, this is a fascinating opportunity that grew out of a 2023 Moonshot Grant from Remake Learning.

“I’m a first-generation Mexican-American. My family from Mexico, my uncles, they’re all pilots. They all fly planes and things like that,” Booker-Gamez says. She doesn’t plan to work in aviation, but she’s eager to get her drone license.

“I make music, personally,” she says. “So I’m looking to get nice content and possibly make music videos and stuff for myself and my peers.”

GROWING A COMMUNITY

Like all Moonshot Grant projects, FLAG began as a bold, untested idea with a range of benefits for Pittsburgh-region students and their communities.

It was proposed by a team of three: Dr. Kristin Deichler, assistant superintendent at South Fayette, Dr. Janeen Peretin, director of communication, innovation and advancement at Baldwin-Whitehall, and Emily Sanders, assistant superintendent at Beaver Area.

FLAG began with an initial cohort of 20 girls from Baldwin-Whitehall, Beaver Area, South Fayette, Ambridge and McKeesport school districts, who worked together during the summer of 2023. A second cohort was trained during the spring of this year.

Several of the students are now licensed drone pilots who have opted to volunteer as mentors for the current crop of FLAG participants.

“We’re keeping in touch with the girls once they go to college to see any opportunities that we can have on certain internships or related to drones,” Peretin says. “We’re helping them build a network.”

The third FLAG cohort, which was open to students from any district, launched in September. They have already been busy: Given the unpredictable nature of Pittsburgh weather, Peretin says, “we actually front-loaded all of the in-person sessions for the fall cohort. So we met three times in October.”

Along with these in-person group meetings at South Fayette, the girls gather for virtual sessions and work independently in their own districts with a teacher who serves as their “home coach.”

At the in-person meetings, the day begins with a check-in about the things they’re learning. New this year is the opportunity to earn things like stickers, keychains and water bottles by working hard on specific skills. At their most recent in-person session, students from several schools looked proud to have earned this FLAG-branded swag.

The students also meet with professionals, like Sgt. Scott, to discuss real-world applications of drone tech. After Scott’s indoor presentation, he brought the students outside for a demonstration and the chance to see how the tech in his squad car controls and communicates with his drone.

Then it was time to fly.

HANDS-ON AND FUTURE-FACING

On this particular morning in late October, the students attempted to transport a payload of Sour Patch Kids from one side of a field to the other. Windy weather posed a challenge and they needed to test variables like the length of the string attached to the candy, attempting to keep it from being shaken loose by vibration.

As whimsical as it was to experiment with airborne Halloween candy, these teens are already thinking about life-saving applications of this work. Dr. Lori Paluti, who works closely with the students, is developing a service to deliver emergency medications by drone. One FLAG student has already done an internship with Paluti’s company.

Once they complete their drone flights, it’s time for lunch. FLAG students are always given ample meals and extra food to bring home for their families, if needed. That’s a priority: “We’re just really committed to making sure there’s no barrier, no hurdle that participating in this creates for them,” Deichler says.

After lunch, they head indoors for theory class. Paluti teaches these lessons to prepare the girls for the certification test, including training them to read maps and understand flight at various altitudes, as well as procedures related to flying near airports.

“She teaches them all of the theory,” Deichler says, “and then we usually do some sort of activity to assess their learning from that day.”

The students have plans to apply this learning in different ways: Some are interested in working as drone pilots for construction companies or real estate firms, or filming weddings and other events for paying clients. One student already works as a volunteer firefighter.

“The fire department that she works with bought a drone,” Deichler says, “and she’s specifically attending this in order to serve them in that capacity.”

For other students, FLAG is simply a chance to expand their STEM learning in a unique way and connect with teens who share similar interests, rather than being the first step toward an aviation career.

“Not every girl takes the test,” Deichler says, and that’s by design. “Just as important as deciding you want to pursue it is deciding that this isn’t for me, but I learned a new skill set.”

But for those who have found their career path, Deichler proudly notes that they have met the challenge of FLAG and managed to soar: “Every participant that we’ve had sit for the test has passed and become certified.”

Authored by

Melissa Rayworth

Melissa Rayworth has spent two decades writing about the building blocks of modern life — how we design our homes, raise our children and care for elderly family members, how we interact with pop culture in our marketing-saturated society, and how our culture tackles (and avoids) issues of social justice and the environment.