An Afternoon at the Museum Takes Students on a Maritime Trip to the South Pacific
By Olivia E. Jackson
The Shipwreck & Lifesaving Museum opens its doors year round to provide island schools with free hands-on learning experiences as part of our Sea of Opportunities maritime education program. On January 23, we welcomed middle school students from the Nantucket Lighthouse School. They joined Egan Maritime’s Manager of Maritime Education, Evan Schwanfelder, for an afternoon of seafaring history from the island's shores to the South Pacific, and built Polynesian Stick Charts of Nantucket and her surrounding waters. Using clay, wooden skewers, sea shells, and wax craft sticks, the students implemented and creatively interpreted the lessons they had learned about the practical use and innovation of these stick charts. We were very impressed and loved the results!
The Nantucket Lighthouse School's Assistant Director of Middle School Programs and 5th grade teacher, Mary Ann Bartlett, thanked Evan for the wonderful afternoon at the Museum. She said:
We can't thank you enough for hosting our Middle School today at the Life-Saving Museum. The lesson on Polynesian Stick Maps was perfect! And, so well set up! We will have a lot to talk about in the next few days and weeks to come as our students digest all the information and make those connections to our ancient civilizations and explorers curriculum.
We really appreciated your upbeat, organized and engaging presentation, the student project, and all the preparation that went into it.
We look forward to working with you again sometime in the future Evan. For now, please know that the afternoon was really appreciated by everyone at the Nantucket Lighthouse School Middle School!
Started in 2012, Sea of Opportunities is a diverse offering of education and outreach programs available to every Nantucket student at multiple points throughout their student career. Our program seeds the maritime workforce of tomorrow and opens doors to opportunities for local youth that will enhance their futures and our coastal community. We believe in the power of education to inform and inspire our students, and we love being able to provide students with meaningful learning experiences on the water, in the classroom, and at the Museum thanks to the dedicated support of our donors.
