EDUCATION PROGRAMS AT THE WATERLINE CENTER
Together, the Essex Shipbuilding Museum and its shipyard tell the story of an industry and how a coastal village at work shaped maritime history. Lesson plans and educational programs in the Museum Shipyard are linked directly to the Museum collections and exhibits.
The goal of our staff is to rekindle interest in the knowledge, innovation, ingenuity and experimentation that sparked the art and industry of shipbuilding. We design compelling, hands-on programs and exhibits that invite visitors to explore living relationships between history, geography, business, economics, science, math, physics and design. We hope our guests leave with a better understanding of:
- how shipwrights and yard gangs applied science, skills, tools and technology to design and build ship hulls.
- how people at work create industries, history and legacy through efforts to survive and prosper.
In its education program, the Museum has been very successful with highly regarded programs that introduce traditional shipbuilding and sailing skills through the basic scientific principles which underlie them. To achieve this, the programs focus on integrating theory with experiential learning tailored to the age and stage of participating groups. The age of typical groups range from K-12 school children to elementary school math and science teachers to bus tour groups of mixed age adults. Past year's groups, for example, included children from Dorchester YMCA; school groups from Beverly, Watertown, Wenham and Merrimack; the Riverwoods at Exeter Senior Resident Program; the Essex Brownies; and Saga Tours, a British tour group for adults age fifty and over.
For several years, the Museum has served over 4,000 school children each year with programs averaging two hours per 20 children. Museum educators and the education committee design and tailor programs in collaboration with the group teacher; the impetus for a program is often based on a principle or concept which the teacher is already teaching in the classroom and with specific learning outcomes. Expanding this topic during the museum visit and relating it to the shipbuilding and sailing experience greatly enhances learner participation and understanding. For example, in March 1997, the Museum hosted all Essex Elementary School eighth grade technology students for four days at the Waterline Center. They learned to plan and construct a 1/3rd scale Chebacco Boat and had the chance to compare their progress with the THOMAS E. LANNON, a 65 foot wooden schooner then being built in the Museum's shipyard.
For three years, the Museum has been lead site for the northeast region of the Museum Institute for Teaching Science (MITS). In July 1997, the Museum hosted 18 teachers from across the state, working in partnership with the Peabody Essex Museum and the schooner, the GLOUCSTER ADVENTURE. The teachers worked on preparing interdisciplinary lesson plans for math and science, focusing on weather, water, flight, navigation, ocean currents and design techniques. An example of a design module included the construction of helium air ships to study buoyancy in a fluid medium such as air.
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