The Wooden Boat Factory Uses Boat Building to Inspire Philly Kids
"Boats Have You lot Somewhere"
"Boats Have Yous Somewhere"
The Philadelphia Wooden Gunkhole Factory is no trade school. It uses boat building to inspire Philly kids
Mar. 25, 2016
"What we're doing is moving this lip then this piece volition lay perfectly apartment," says Jesus Castro, leaning over the basic of a sailboat turned upside down, to iii attentive teenaged boys. A moment later on, he asks them to put this knowledge into action, and testify him another spot where a similar maneuver is required. One of the boys points to a place further toward the boat'southward keel. "Good."
Castro is the Gunkhole, Build, and Sail Programme Managing director at the Philadelphia Wooden Boat Factory (PWBF), an innovative program that offers youth from the Frankford, Kensington and Port Richmond neighborhoods apprenticeships in traditional wooden gunkhole building and sailing skills. Just Philadelphia Wooden Boat Factory is not a trade school. It believes that by creating an environs focused on easily-on learning about a gear up of skills at the intersection of fine art and scientific discipline, young people can cultivate the social and emotional skills needed in the working world.
Philadelphia Wooden Boat Manufacturing plant is an after-school apprenticeship plan for youth between the ages of 14 and 21 from local high schools and an alternative school, El Centro De Estudiantes, which caters to students who have left district schools. The programs are purposefully kept minor—only 18-20 in the studio on a given day—and then apprentices receive easily-on training in constructing sailboats and rowboats as well equally sailmaking and how to sheet.
Students are recruited through presentations at their schools, and come of their ain accord. Just in one case in the door, they tend to stick around: Philadelphia Wooden Gunkhole Factory apprentices average 350 hours in the store a year, approximately ane 3rd of the fourth dimension a Philadelphia district educatee spends in school. PWBF also has a program called Riverguides, in which students larn nigh watershed protection and ecology science, strengthening their Stem skills.
"In boat building," says Philadelphia Wooden Boat Factory amateur Yamir Jackson-Adens, "you're free to motion. You don't have a whole lot of restrictions. Information technology'south more of a trial-and-error kind of thing. You learn from those mistakes. In schoolhouse, if you neglect, yous've failed."
Andy Cintron, now a program assistant at PWBF, began as a student apprentice when he was a xix-year-onetime student at El Centro. "I had a hard fourth dimension in high schoolhouse," Cintron says. "Merely I liked working with my hands and when they told me I could have the opportunity to build a boat, I jumped on it. Then when nosotros launched that commencement boat and it didn't sink and I could say, I congenital that, it was the most amazing feeling."
Cintron says part of what's and then influential about beingness taught gunkhole building is how it increases your critical thinking and problem solving capabilities, since near of boat building is working with curves and odd angles; there are very few 45 or 90 degree angles, like in carpentry work.
Pairing the craft of wooden gunkhole building—a practise that fell out of favor when fiberglass boats became feasible—and underserved youth in Philadelphia makes sense: "They're both existence forgotten," says Castro, who came to PWBF from the Camden program. "I've heard a lot of kids say, boats take you somewhere. For a lot of these kids, somewhere has not been an option."
Founded in 1996, Philadelphia Wooden Boat Factory is office of a loose network of programs that recognize the potential in this connection between traditional sailing skills and underserved youth; similar initiatives exist in Seattle , Alexandria , and closer to domicile, Camden . But the roots of the thought go much further back—to the first Outward Bound programs, which were at sea and predicated on the idea that education sailing skills to young people likewise teaches character.
A sailing and boatbuilding education, says PWBF'due south Executive Director Brett Hart, is uniquely positioned to provide courage, tenacity, and competency—qualities that all youth development programs are trying to build.
Starting with its founder Geoffrey McKonly, Philadelphia Wooden Gunkhole Factory has always had a stiff educational model that stresses developing the strengths immature people already take, giving them a lot of say in their learning, and letting them effort and fail and acquire from the process of that failure.
Hart describes i of his early days at PWBF: "Xxx kids had just come up in, they were very high free energy, it was their starting time day in the shop. The kids were standing around impatiently and Geoff wasn't telling them to practise annihilation. My toes were curling from the awkwardness of the moment, all of my teacher instincts were screaming, have control! Simply Geoff didn't. Finally, one of the kids came over to Geoff and said, 'Hey! Tin we offset?' Geoff said, 'Sure, you know what to do.' Then the child did; he only got up on a milk crate and started chiseling. And I thought, 'Whoa, this guy's got an idea.' That was the sea alter. The adjacent affair I know, I am up with him at three in the morning time maxim, 'Did I do correct past that child, what could I have done ameliorate?'"
In 2010, Hart took the reins and made the program an after schoolhouse apprenticeship, which he feels is a better fit with kids' schedules and needs. Though it currently recruits students mainly in 10th and 11th grades, Hart says PWBF is considering expanding its program to become a comprehensive feel starting in the summer of 7th grade and continuing through the summer of 12th class. They are as well experimenting with the idea of empowering older loftier schoolhouse youth to become both academic and boat building mentors for these new younger students. Further, he wants to airplane pilot a full two week sailing army camp and competitive sailing team.
Just what Philadelphia Wooden Gunkhole Manufactory really wants its students to larn is social and emotional learning, past focusing on cultivating resilience—the ability to recover from failure and disappointment.
"Our kids are incredibly resilient coming in the door," says Hart, but they oft lack the support of caring adults and the past experiences that show them that failure is role of the process of becoming a stronger learner, artist, or human. In fact, at PWBF, failure and recovery is part of the curriculum, and leads to other learned skills like coping, character and command.
Pairing the arts and crafts of wooden boat building—a exercise that fell out of favor when fiberglass boats became feasible—and underserved youth in Philadelphia makes sense: "They're both being forgotten," says Jesus Castro. "I've heard a lot of kids say, boats take you somewhere. For a lot of these kids, somewhere has not been an option."
"As they work with the boats, students become feedback that helps them to recover when things they try don't work, and to feel safe taking risks in the futurity," says Hart. "At first you lot have a young person sanding a mast. 'Is this washed?' he keeps request you. Soon, he is proverb, 'Can I do this any better?' We don't correct the piece of work of students considering it robs the students of the opportunity to fail. Without failure, in that location's no way to know that y'all're capable of doing it better."
"In boat building," agrees PWBF amateur Yamir Jackson-Adens, "you're free to move. You don't have a whole lot of restrictions. It's more of a trial-and-mistake kind of thing. Yous learn from those mistakes. In schoolhouse, if you fail, you lot've failed."
In improver to the hands-on concrete action that boat edifice requires, apprentices are also exposed to other stress-reduction activities like mindfulness meditation, and counseling; each amateur receives a session with on-staff social worker Emma Bergman every two weeks.
The result has been national recognition for Philadelphia Wooden Boat Factory'southward effectiveness. Two years ago, it became ane of eight organizations to receive $100,000 from the Susan Crown Exchange . "In return, [the billionaire distributor] asked them to gather iii times over the two-yr flow of the grant to dissect what they were doing and why it had proved successful. Her goal was to detect the secret sauce and reveal it to other organizations trying to do similar work," The New York Times reported .
Further, PWBF's graduates are thriving. Kimo Merced, who graduated in 2015, received a scholarship to an aristocracy boat building college in Kennebunkport, Massachusetts.
"Growing upwards in North Philadelphia surrounded past a lot of negative attitudes and environmental hazards, I never thought I had the opportunity to follow a dream of mine," wrote Merced in a reflection in a Philadelphia Wooden Boat Manufacturing plant brochure. "The Philadelphia Wooden Boat Factory has become that dream. My work here has taught me that hardships and working hard are cardinal to becoming happy."
Header Photograph: Courtesy of the Philadelphia Wooden Boat Factory
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/philadelphia-wooden-boat-factory/
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