Three months of work for 45 students of the Our Lady of Czestochowa School in Jersey City culminated on May 21 when they launched a rowboat they built into the harbor off Liberty State Park.
Principal Anna Mae Stefanelli said the boat project combined learning the necessary engineering, math and science for building the vessel with hands-on construction experience. Four weeks of book learning and classroom instruction, including geography lessons about area waterways, preceded the boat building, which was done in the school dining hall.
So many students were involved that they had to be divided into teams to work on the boat in shifts. Each team had to learn to trust that the preceding team had done their work correctly.
“It involved teamwork, and understanding that no one way is going to do it,” Stefanelli said, “and it’ll work only if we work together.”
Nelly Morales, vice principal and facilitator for the project, said it was done in partnership with Project USE (for Urban-Suburban Environment), a Newark-based organization promoting experiential education, job readiness and life skills, and professional development.
Anonymous donor financing
The project was funded with $5,000 from an anonymous $6,000 donation. Stefanelli said the remaining $1,000 will be spent next year on bringing in a professional writer to help the students learn to write their autobiographies, adding yet another skill to the experience.
Stefanelli hopes to make the boat building an annual project.
Students in grades 6, 7 and 8 took part in the program. Stefanelli said additional instruction in learning how to row may be added next year because at this year’s launch there was a lot of “circling” before the young mariners learned to row in unison.
Now that the boat is built and has been tested on the water, Stefanelli said, the students are trying to decide how it might become a permanent fixture at the school.