In the fall of 1998, I began building a boat with kids at an East Harlem middle school. I chose to do this not because I had done the research to discover that this was an ideal educational paradigm, but to fulfill the dream of the teacher in whose classroom I was volunteering. As my students enthusiastically showed up each week and as their investment in working together to complete the boat grew, I realized that the model worked. It still does. I didn’t know it at the time, but the program’s success was a reflection of so many of the principles and practices that would soon emerge as the leading ideas for developing young people.
Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics wouldn’t become a widespread acronym until years later but, in retrospect, the utility of STEM content is a great part of why building a wooden boat resonated with my first eight students and me. It is also why those skills remain central to everything that takes place in our Hunts Point boatshop and on the Bronx River where today we serve 4,000 youth and community members through our boatbuilding, environmental science, and sailing youth development programs. The maker movement had not yet gathered steam, but Rocking the Boat fully embraced its tenets of collaboration and education from our beginning. Paul Tough’s game-changing book How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character was published seven years ago; character education is gradually gaining ground in the field, in part because of Rocking the Boat’s pioneering work. Books, white papers, and documentaries continue to advance each of these three themes, all validating and promoting what Rocking the Boat has been excelling at for more than 20 years.
Whether or not one uses the specific terms STEM, grit, and maker to describe the magic that happens at Rocking the Boat, the premises are strong and the impacts lasting. Your endorsement of our work is every bit as meaningful as the scholarly research and professional perspective. You attend events, follow our work from near and far, applaud student successes, volunteer time and energy, and spread the word. And you contribute financially, generously and with confidence that we will put it to the best possible use. I very much hope you will do so again this fall.
Thank you!
Rocking the Boat participants reach with both hands and step with both feet into restoring their own local river, and become citizen scientists by tackling valuable research and conservation projects such as microplastics research, wetland management, and long-legged wading bird surveys.
Rocking the Boat participants reach with both hands and step with both feet into restoring their own local river, and become citizen scientists by tackling valuable research and conservation projects such as microplastics research, wetland management, and long-legged wading bird surveys.
