An Investor and a Soviet Fighter Jet (A Think)

It's not so much that there isn't any interesting news today. But, its always important to remember the hard to reach students who aren't always intuned to what we want them to be thinking about. As teachers we must continuously work to gain their attention and keep it. Perhaps they are thinking about cars, or sports, or boys, or girls. Well if they're thinking about airplanes this newspaper article might interest them. The New York Times has an article today entitled: Soviet Relic Becomes Capitalist's Toy. The article states:

Consider Jeff Marshall’s unusual mode of transportation. The Greenwich (Conn.) Time newspaper reported Monday that Mr. Marshall owns and flies a Soviet L-39 attack fighter jet, which burns through nearly 200 gallons of fuel per hour while in the air. (And we thought our gas bill was high.)

Mr. Marshall thinks that the plane was probably used in the Soviet's war with Afghanistan in the 1980s.

(Note that this article itself has several interesting links.)

Well the question is, how can we use this interesting snippet of a story to help our students learn important information and think in critical ways?

1. Ask students to discuss their favorite mode of transportation, be it for pleasure or for practical purposes. You might even encourage them to conduct a survey of students in the school as to their favorite modes of transportation. This would allow you to incorporate math into the activity, by perhaps having them figure out percentages, and more.
2. Ask students if they think that it's appropriate for an American businessman to be flying around in a Soviet jet. Encourage them to consider several sides of this question.
3. Ask students to write a journal entry, or a blog, explaining what it might feel like in 2006 to fly on a plane that was used in a war in the 1980s.
4. Ask students to conduct research on the pilots who might have flown in this plane during the war. They might start with wikipedia.