Barrington Irving, first African American man and youngest pilot to ever fly solo around the world, spoke to students at Ocean Lakes High School.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nIrving, though, had much different intentions in high school. A gifted athlete, Irving was a star football player with several athletic scholarship opportunities. It was a chance meeting with a pilot though that turned his attention from the sidelines to the skies.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a passion for something in my life,\u201d Irving said, \u201cwhich was to fly.\u201d<\/p>\n
He turned down his full-ride scholarship offers and instead ventured out to take on the world of aviation. He obsessively chased one goal: to fly solo across the globe. Thanks to a never-say-die attitude and a relentless search for sponsors, Irving met his goal. Through the course of his 97-day flight, he flew for 145 hours and made 27 different stops in 13 different countries.<\/p>\n
Irving told students of his many adventures in the air, including flying through an ice storm in Alaska, as well as flying in a sand storm over Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n
With his experience \u2014 not to mention a Guinness Book World Record as the youngest pilot to fly around the earth \u2014 Irving is encouraging students to give serious thought to chasing their own aviation dreams with furthering their education in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects.<\/p>\n
He has launched new programs, including having students from urban school divisions build a plane for him to fly, as well as build a car which he will race against a jet plane.\u00a0 In addition, students can follow along with him on his next adventure: The Flying Classroom.\u00a0 It will be a six-month trek to all seven continents where he will solve math and science problems during 36 different expeditions. Students across the world will help him with each problem as he will communicate and live blog with classrooms while in the air as well as on land.<\/p>\n
\u201cMath and science have changed my life,\u201d Irving said. \u201cI want to help young people discover the career opportunities. The careers of the future\u2026those top ten careers will be in math and science.\u201d<\/p>\n
For more information about these programs, follow Irving online at www.experienceaviation.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If students in Ocean Lakes High School\u2019s auditorium learned anything this morning, it was: There is life outside of football. Ocean Lakes, in partnership with Mitsubishi\u2019s Dream and Soar program, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":423,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions\/423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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