In the Best Class Projects category, we go to Tiverton High School in Rhode Island and the industrial and technical education programs there, the Herald News reports.
Phillips: “There isn’t a true straight line or a square cut in any of this.”
(Photo: Michael Storer (Storer Boat Plans) via Flickr)
Students learn website design, culinary arts, medical technology, and other career subjects in the school’s assorted industrial and tech ed programs. But there’s one that stands out in their minds: the woodworking program William Phillips runs.
Not only is the woods program more challenging than many of the others—physics, geometry, and other math disciplines come into the work—but the real draw is the class project, which takes almost the entire school year to complete.
The class builds a boat. A real boat. And then they ride in it. And then they sell it for a bit of business education.
You can’t build a real boat without a good understanding of the science and math behind boat-building. So mastering nautical terms like aft, fore, ballast, and transom is only a small part of the challenge. The real challenge is planning the cuts and crafting the wood.
This is where the math comes in, since mathematics doesn’t have many real-world challenges that can compare to hand-shaping wood and building a boat that not only sails but has value to prospective customers.
And every year, students rise to that challenge.
“When we start this project, the kids are hesitant,” the paper quoted Mr Phillips as saying. “They aren’t sure they can build a boat that is strong and water tight.”
But after seeing three boats built by former students in the program moored at Nannaquaket Pond, which is near the school, the students “come to class excited to learn,” he said. “There is a big learning curve with this project, but my students who have worked on this through the years, they say it is something they will remember all of their lives,” Mr Phillips was quoted as saying.