Only Special Education Team to compete

Over 47 schools competed at Speedfest over the weekend and Checotah Middle School was one of them.

Speedfest is an exciting, high-speed aircraft design competition which is intended to foster enthusiasm for aviation, and unmanned aircraft design. There are two flight classes: Alpha Class is the Advanced class which is for collegiate- level teams. The India Class is the Invitational class. It is open to high-school level teams and teams with similar skill level, on an invitational basis. The top three teams in each class will be recognized with awards and winners of each class are awarded the Speedfest Cup.

Ms. Dunn’s Special Education class was the first and only special needs students to ever compete at Speedfest, proving to be pioneers in getting any event to be more inclusive of all students regardless of ability, capability or disability.

“My students did a great job at participating in the India class portion of Speedfest on Saturday, April 27 at the unmanned airfield in Glenco,” Ms. Dunn said. “As a precursor to the competition, my students learned important aeronautical concepts such as the properties of air, parts of an airplane, Bernoulii’s principle, law of the lever, and the center of gravity.”

Students on the CMS team included Mason Abell, Alora Breedlove-Canada, Jacob Beasley, Logan July, Mark Magreevy and Jazzmyn Meeks.

The team was challenged to build a remotecontrolled airplane and a grant from OSU CEAT DoD, provided a foam plane kit and necessary components such as servos, a motor, a transmitter and receiver, a propeller, and batteries for the students to use. Interns at the NASA Oklahoma Space Grant Consortium supported the team and the build through virtual meetings.

The team also had the opportunity to learn more about the Alpha class teams, collegelevel engineering students, and see how they designed and built their planes for competition.

“This proved to be a great time to see the opportunities available at OSU and to highlight aviation career opportunities,” Dunn said. “Our team participated in a pre-competition flight to ensure that the plane was ready for the competition. The plane only flew for a few seconds before it crashed. The kids were not discouraged at all. They just said ‘It’s ok, we’ll build it again’ and within four days they had an even better plane.”

“I’m just so proud of them! They’ve learned a lot about aerospace and the process of building a plane, but most of all, they’ve come together as a team and learned to overcome challenges.”