PORT TOWNSEND — Students and teachers from the Port Townsend School District today will share examples of just a few of the 70 place-based and maritime projects they’ve been working on for the past three years.
The presentation will be from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Northwest Maritime Center at 431 Water St.
“The invitation is really out to the whole community,” said Sarah Rubenstein, director of the district’s Maritime Discovery Initiative.
“We wanted to have one event to kind of celebrate with the community what we’ve been doing for the last three years with our community partners.”
The program has hosted other presentations for specific projects. However, this will be the first time the community has the opportunity to see just a peek of the roughly 70 projects students have worked on since the maritime discovery program’s place-based learning initiative was integrated into the curriculum three years ago, Rubenstein said.
“We probably won’t have 70 on display,” Rubenstein said, “but it’ll be a variety of maritime and place-based projects.”
The Maritime Discovery Initiative is a five-year pilot program that brings place-based learning opportunities to students of all ages in the Port Townsend School District.
A number of projects that will be on display today have been part of the maritime manufacturing and boatbuilding courses taught at Port Townsend High School, she said.
Kelley Watson, the maritime woodworking teacher at PTHS, will be there with some of her students, who are in the process of building skin-on-frame kayaks, which students have been working on all year, cutting and building everything by hand, including the paddles.
Maritime Discovery Initiative projects are not restricted to the maritime industry.
Some PTHS student will be presenting the work they’ve done on a garden project in which students grow and harvest food to be used in the school cafeteria’s salad bar.
These hands-on learning experiences aren’t just in the high school; the initiative has implemented curriculum from preschool to high school, Rubenstein said.
Grant Street Elementary School students plan to install a free library outside the school next week to encourage students to continue reading during the summer break.
Some of the elementary school teachers will discuss their students’ annual salmon release projects, and seventh- and eighth-grade teachers will present the data students have collected in area watersheds, including the waters off Indian and Marrowstone islands.
Other middle school students have been working with the North Olympic Salmon Coalition to restore salmon habitat in Port Hadlock, and some elementary school students have learned about birds of prey with the Discovery Bay Wild Bird Rescue.
Even the literature teachers get in on the program.
Earlier this year, high school English teacher Chris Pierson read Daniel James Brown’s “Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics,” then toured the local locations mentioned in the book.
The Maritime Discovery Initiative requires students to complete two of these hands-on projects during the school year. According to Rubenstein, projects can be completed in a variety of ways, as long as they bring the learning outside of the classroom and they apply to real-world problems in the community.
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Jefferson County Editor/Reporter Cydney McFarland can be reached at 360-385-2335, ext. 55052, or at cmcfarland@ peninsuladailynews.com.
