The bulk of the program will be Ann Fraioli's 9th grade intro to New York Harbor class. Throughout the school year Ann maintains a busy schedule "in the field" as she spends every other day with each of the five ninth grade classes exploring New York Harbor as part of their cross-curricular science and social studies course. This course makes it possible for each ninth grade class to be in the field every other week. For the final two cycles of this class, Ann will have her students participate in two units on the Spirit of Massachusetts.
The first of the two cycles will be science based where students will participate in a trawl, animal identification, water quality testing, and navigation. The second cycle will have a social studies focus, and students will learn about life at sea and the history of fishing and commerce by sail relative to the New York harbor, while also becoming more familiar with the systems on board and the responsibilities of the crew. Students will participate in docking operations, setting sail, and sail evolutions during both trips.
Another major part of the program includes a series of weekend overnight trips. Our first overnight program was for teachers and staff interested in incorporating onboard education into their curriculum.
Our second overnight program was this last weekend and we welcomed New York Harbor School Sea Scouts and students in the Vessel Operations and Engineering Career and Technical Education (CTE) tracks at the Harbor School. This trip was a great success.
On Friday night we short-tacked our way down to Gravesend Bay. Saturday we trawled in Bay Ridge Flats, and the students got up close and personal with a huge summer flounder, a few hake, a sea robin, and many other critters! From there we sailed up the Hudson to Alpine Landing, NJ where we hiked to the top of the Palisades. Quite the adventure! We culminated our program with a class on sail theory as we made our way back to Governors Island on Sunday.
Our next two overnights will be with the Maritime Literature and Applied Mathematics classes respectively. This coming weekend Tim's Maritime Literature class will get an insiders look at the lifestyle they have been studying in class, and during our final trip Rick and Noah will explore Applied Mathematics through the physics of sail, astronomy, and celestial navigation. Both trips will also have a handful of spots available to the Sea Scouts and CTE students interested in continuing their sail training.
The final service that Spirit will provide is as a dockside platform for classes to visit the boat during extended class periods and discuss topics relative to the curriculum while touring the boat and speaking to crew. So far the Marine Engineering, Vessel Operations, and Marine Tech classes have come down to Yankee Pier during their class time, and we expect to see Marine Policy this week as well as others.
Enjoy our stories and pictures from this exciting collaboration!
-Abi Iverson
Educator
