If it weren't for the pilots who took him on a field trip to the San
Diego airport in junior high, Capt. Greg Chrisman figures he might not
be flying planes today.
To return the favor to a new generation, Chrisman on Wednesday
visited a San Jose fifth-grade classroom to offer some of the same
support he benefited from as a kid.
His message?
``Stay in school!''
Chrisman visited Seven Trees School as part of the Southwest
Airlines Adopt-A-Pilot program. Now in its eighth year, the mentorship
program pairs Southwest pilots with fifth-grade classes in poor and
working-class communities across the country. The pilots first visit
their assigned classroom to drive home the importance of an education.
Then over the ensuing four weeks, as they fly to various U.S. cities,
they correspond by postcard and e-mail.
``I had things like this made available to me when I was a kid, and
it made an impact,'' Chrisman said. ``Now I want to do the same for
other kids.''
Chrisman, dressed in a crisp pilot's uniform, talked to the 32 kids
in Larry Volpe's class about the more than 17 years of schooling and
flying it took for him to land his pilot's job at Southwest.
And the kids peppered him with questions: Had he ever gotten lost in the skies? Flown through a tornado? Crashed the plane?
No, he answered to the last question, but his 737 aircraft had been struck by lightning.
``We were up in the clouds. We couldn't see it coming,'' he said. ``But we just kept flying and everything was fine.''
Over the next month, as Volpe's students correspond with Chrisman,
they will also cover a Southwest-provided curriculum that integrates
the study of aviation with science, math and language arts. Volpe said
this is one of the things he likes most about the program.
``The lessons go across the curriculum,'' Volpe said. ``To me, that's the way life is.''
Being fifth-graders, the students in Volpe's classroom were perhaps
more impressed by the lightning incident than Chrisman's
``stay-in-school'' message. But Volpe hopes that will change as the
class deepens its relationship with Chrisman. ``I talk to them'' about
staying in school, Volpe said. ``But it's best they hear it not just
from me, but from other adults in the community.''
In his classroom at Seven Trees, set in a working-class neighborhood
of Asian and Latino immigrants in South San Jose, about one in five
children are behind grade level, Volpe said.
And if current state data for the neighborhood holds, at least 1 in 10 will end up dropping out of high school.
``Kids who I taught eight years ago are now seniors and a lot of them are struggling,'' Volpe said.
Contact Maya Suryaraman msuryaraman@mercury news.com or (408) 920-5505.
