Last month Inka Petersen and I
attended the Teaching With Small Boats Conference outside of Seattle hosted by
Center For Wooden Boats. We started out at CFWB's incredible facility in
downtown Seattle drooling over their collection of beautiful vintage sail,
rowing and powerboats; most of which are available to rent.
Then we were bussed up to Cama
Beach State Park. This is a revitalized fishing camp from the early 20th
century right on Saratoga Pass of Puget Sound and consists of about 30 cabins
on the water, a boathouse, classroom space, workshop, and large meeting hall
with food service. It was pretty impressive! An $18m partnership between CFWB
and the Washington State Park system… that makes California closing State
parks, look pretty sad.
The 85 conference participants
represented 45 programs across the US and Northwestern Canada. Programs ranged
in size from several hundred students to start-ups like we were three years ago.
There were full-fledged vocational schools, public schools, museums and
everything in between represented.
It was a very encouraging
atmosphere…everyone was sharing ideas, experiences and resources. The tone and
focus of everyone was “ How can we help each other?”
In addition to presentations and
workshops there was a full schedule of hands on activities. I attended session
on the art of native canoe carving led by John Mullen, a member of the
Swinomish, a local native tribal group. The canoe building traditions of this
area are renown and we were lucky to have two of the great canoe carvers on
hand to learn from. Saaduuts, program coordinator for the CWB's Carving
Cultural Connections, was also on hand and guiding workshops in how to carve
native canoe paddles.
I had wanted to attend the
conference, both to see what other programs were up to and share ideas, but
also to find curriculum resources for our program. Since we started, I
have wanted to integrate science and math into our program; both for its own
value and so we could attract interest and possibly work with the public school
system.
We got all I wanted and more:
We met Joe Youcha from BuildingTo Teach at the Alexandria Seaport Foundation who provided a wealth of
information and access to his website which contains hundreds of curriculum
ideas, lesson plans and 8 hours of video tutorials. That alone was worth the
trip. We also learned alot about how to work with schools and shared our knowledge with other programs just starting out.
It was an inspiring and fun weekend and I hope to attend again.
