Inside the Classroom: Jeff Neaves - Eaton High School
Inside the Classroom: Jeff Neaves - Eaton High School
Inside the Classroom is a series that visits Northwest ISD campuses throughout the year and highlights the magical moments that happen between teachers and students each and every day across the entire 234 square miles of NISD.
Many Career and Technical Education teachers throughout Northwest ISD bring a perfect blend of technical expertise and teaching experience to their classroom. This uniquely positions them to provide their students with a connection to the real world.
Jeff Neaves is certainly one of these exceptional teachers. The 18-year teaching veteran is also a member of the Air National Guard where he is an aircraft mechanic and a crew chief for C-130 aircraft.
For this week’s Inside the Classroom, we visited Mr. Neaves’ advanced drone class where senior students in NISD’s Aviation and Aeronautics Academy were conducting mock search and rescue missions with their drones.
When students enter the academy at Eaton High School, they spend their freshman and sophomore years in introductory classes. Then, prior to their junior year, students pick a track of aviation maintenance, drone (unmanned flight) or aviation (flight). Their remaining two years consist of classes that are specialized for their track.
The drone specialization has been available for four years, meaning this year’s seniors are the first class Mr. Neaves has taught for four consecutive years. They are also modeling what an advanced drone course can look like for students across Texas.
There currently is not an advanced drone course approved by TEA, and Mr. Neaves is part of an NISD team in the process of piloting the course while building TEKS and curriculum to be submitted as an innovative course.
The hopes are that, once approved, the work done this year by NISD staff and students will provide the blueprint for other high schools, including the unique search and rescue missions we witnessed during Inside the Classroom.
Before class, Mr. Neaves had hidden rubber ducks around the exterior of Eaton’s campus. After a quick introduction, students grabbed their drones and made their way to the school’s football field. Fellow students joined as visual observers and helped pilots record notes.
In a previous class, students had mapped search patterns that they used as they put their drones to work searching for various colored ducks. The different colors represented increasingly difficult levels of concealment, making some ducks worth more points than others.
Students had 45 minutes to find as many ducks as possible. After spending much of their time flying over and around the football field, they grabbed their drones and moved to the band practice area on the opposite side of campus.
Mr. Neaves observed and offered tips to students as they conducted their searches. After the 45 minutes had passed, students returned to Mr. Neaves’ classroom to discuss what went well and improvements they could make. They then spent the remainder of class completing their written post-flight analysis.
In a future class, they will run the same mission again to see how they improve. After, they will then use the drone’s built-in thermal camera capabilities to even further simulate how drones are used in the real world.
Mr. Neaves’ goal is to expose students to as many practical applications of drone usage as possible, making students stand out for potential jobs when they graduate. In previous lessons this year, the class has used drones to inspect roofs, power lines and cell phone towers.
In addition to providing students with hands-on experiences, Mr. Neaves’ unique position as an active Air National Guardsman provides insight that many students may not get. For example, he spent time in Asia last year in his Air National Guard duty, then was able to show students pictures from his trip and share his experiences.
Students from the Aviation and Aeronautics Academy graduate and move on to a variety of different roles. Some continue to a four-year college to study aerospace engineering, some continue pursuing commercial pilot licenses, while others go straight into the workforce. Some even move onto military service, and Mr. Neaves actually has a former student serving alongside him in the Air National Guard.
No matter where they go next, graduates of the academy go there prepared for whatever lies ahead thanks to the expertise and care they receive from teachers like Mr. Neaves.
Check back regularly all year as we continue to visit students and teachers throughout Northwest ISD and offer a rarely seen look Inside the Classroom.