PORT TOWNSEND — The Port Townsend School District in now three years into its five-year Maritime Discovery Initiative, which brings place-based learning opportunities to students of all ages across the district.
“It’s a program where all of the students in our district are really connecting with something authentic,” said Sarah Rubenstein, the director of the Maritime Discovery Initiative program.
Rubenstein said they have implemented a pilot curriculum that is for students in kindergarten through grade 12 and requires students to complete two projects during the school year.
The projects can be completed in a variety of ways and in a variety of subjects, according to Rubenstein.
“Students get to take classroom content and apply it to real world problems in the community and with community partners,” Rubenstein said.
For example, second-graders partnered with Discovery Bay Wild Bird Rescue to learn about birds and how they are affected by loss of habitat. Then they learned to build bird houses.
In the middle school, students worked with the North Olympic Salmon Coalition in Port Hadlock to plant trees in order to help restore salmon habitats.
In high school, English teacher Chris Pierson has his students read “Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics” by Daniel James Brown, then take field trips to connect the book to the surrounding area.
According to Rubenstein, the program was designed not only to engage students in learning, but also help them learn skills that could be applied outside of school and in the community.
Rubenstein said they are now, in the third year of the program, seeing success stories from students coming out of Port Townsend High School’s Maritime Academy.
“We’ve seen students take the skills they’ve gained here and use them as a base for other careers,” Rubenstein said.
“They are skills that apply directly to trades in this area.”
According to Kelley Watson, the Maritime Academy teacher, many students found a career path to pursue due to their experience at Port Townsend High School.
“We’re by no means saying they’re career ready,” Watson said. “But we’ve seen a student who knew he wanted to work in the shipyard, had most of the skills but went to take welding classes in Bremerton so he can be easily employable. We’ve also had a few students find work on the ferries.”
Watson said they hope to maybe partner with the school in Bremerton in order to continue giving Port Townsend’s students a leg up when applying for jobs in the maritime industry.
“Each year, the classes have grown and students are learning and they’re on their way to being mariners,” said Watson.
Currently the district has roughly 70 community partners through this program and hope to possibly gain more.
These partners range from maritime organizations such as the Northwest Maritime Center in Port Townsend to local farms such as Finnriver Farm &Cidery in Chimacum.
The program will cost a total of $750,000 over the initial five years.
Currently, the program is collecting donations and relying on community partners and grants for much of the funding.
According to Rubenstein, much of that money goes toward training teachers and giving them adequate time to plan projects for their classes.
“Many teachers get much more planning time than they’re used to,” said Rubenstein, who was a middle school teacher before she took the job as program director.
“We don’t want this program to be a burden.”
According to the program’s website, the cost per child is roughly $125 per year, and Rubenstein said they hope to build more partnerships in order to help the program extended past its first five years.
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Jefferson County Editor/Reporter Cydney McFarland can be reached at 360-385-2335, ext. 55052, or at cmcfarland@peninsuladailynews.com.
Students from Port Townsend High School spent a night sailing on the Adventuress out of Port Townsend on a field trip as part of the district’s Maritime Discovery Initiative. (Kelley Watson/Port Townsend High School)
