Educational Passages Podcast

Team is the Dream: Relaunch Adventures from Nantucket and More

• Cassie • Season 2 • Episode 6

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In this episode, Cassie talks with Lisa Swanson from Morristown Beard School in New Jersey. Lisa is currently on sabbatical and using her time to give back to her students and to Educational Passages, starting with an adventure to Nantucket, Massachusetts in February. The reason for the trip is explained, as well as other plans for relaunches from North Carolina, Ireland, and even Portugal! We also talk about ocean literacy both in and out of the classroom and ideas for ways to connect more communities this year.

To learn more about the miniboats and stories mentioned, visit these links:


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Educational Passages is a non-profit organization that seeks to connect people around the world to the ocean and each other through unique global experiences.

00:09 - Welcome

Cassie: Welcome to the Educational Passages Podcast. Educational Passages is a non-profit organization that seeks to connect people around the world to the ocean and each other through unique global experiences. I’m your host, Cassie Stymiest. In this episode, we catch up with Lisa Swanson, who is the educator at Morristown-Beard School in New Jersey. You may recall the special episode we did about 10 mini-boats in 10 years with her and her student, Ashley, and since then they've added one more to the fleet. 

00:44 - Intro

Cassie: A few weeks ago we both headed to Nantucket where the first and tenth mini-boat from Morristown-Beard, the Crimson Tide and the Crimson Current, had washed up last summer, along with Gryphon Cruiser. During the ferry ride back home, I got to interview her and hear about all the plans she has for giving back to her students and to the miniboat program during her sabbatical this year, and now I get to share it with you all. 

00:10 – Why Nantucket?

Cassie: This is our first attempt at a podcast episode, kind of off-site. So, I'm here with teacher Lisa Swanson and we are on a ferry from Nantucket to Hyannis and we have some updates on a couple miniboats that we want to share with everyone. So, Lisa, do you want to tell us a little bit more about why we went to Nantucket? 

01:35

Lisa: As you know, we have been talking for months and months and months about how do we get to Nantucket to recover the two miniboats, or actually the three, miniboats that landed on Nantucket way back in June, June or July, right end of June. Here it is, what middle of February, and we finally made it. But anyway, even though it's been a long time, it certainly has given us ample time to make plans and, I think, more importantly, to make a connection with the teacher, Annie Weber, who is teaching at the Intermediate School in Nantucket, give us time to talk with her and gauge her level of interest and see ways in which that maybe she could be part of our adventure. So, again, while it's been a long time coming, I think it's been necessary, or the time that we took to pave the way for this was really necessary. 

Cassie: Yeah, and it took kind of a while because we had two of the boats picked up by fishermen, one that went to the mainland, one that went to Nantucket and then one that actually landed on the beach here. That was the Gryphon Cruiser. So the other two Crimson Current, Crimson Tide, have had a lot of also serendipitous connections. Some of your teachers were on, were kind of up here over the summer, got to see the boats, and then we had a really cool connection with Mary Graves, whose niece is actually at Barryroe, and Barryroe is the school that has Crimson Current and that's a whole other podcast episode in itself, I think. So all these connections and you had some extra time to come over here you want to tell us about that and what your plans are for the next few months. 

03:21

Lisa: My school at Morristown-Beard has given me the entire semester off for a sabbatical and so I have had the last few weeks and I don't have to go back until September. So my sabbatical proposal really revolves around our involvement in educational passages over these last 11 or 12 so years where my plan is to visit some of the places where our many boats have landed in the past, be able to make connections with local people. We've done a big push at our school lately with developing our program to include more ocean literacy work, cross-curriculum activities. So talking with people who live in these ocean communities about how they value the ocean, their views on the ocean and building curriculum around ocean-side locations is something that I plan to use my time for my sabbatical this year. So Nantucket is my very first stop, so being able to visit and meet Annie and see the two boats and get them basically patched up and up and running has been a fantastic start to my sabbatical. 

Cassie: So, yeah, there's going to be lots more adventures to come and we'll try to use this podcast here to provide some updates for everyone to follow along with all of the adventures and helping to connect many, many boats so not just those from Morristown Beard, which I love that you and your school and your students are all committed to helping make that happen and to truly kind of set out to reach that mission that we're all trying to connect around ocean literacy. 

05:00 – Nantucket Miniboat Adventures

Cassie: So, yeah, this Nantucket trip kind of came up, I think, like two weeks ago. We did not know we were coming and then things kind of fell into place and we're like, okay, well, let's meet up, let's just go, let's pick a date. And so Annie is the teacher here in Nantucket and she has three, four, five graders, but she used to work at the middle school and the community is really connected. So we were excited to be able to come over and visit and connect us a little bit more. And then, as we started making more plans, you have a six-hour drive, I have a three-hour drive and you know well, let's meet somewhere. And so how about Falmouth because we have a lot of connections in Falmouth and we've been working with some miniboat projects down there and Jim Manning, who's our oceanographer friend from NOAA, whom we've talked about before, was down there. So we ended up getting to connect a lot of things and we took some visits to the middle school and the high school and lots of things with the Falmouth group who's doing the Cape Cod Sea Turtle stranding work. So now we get to link that all in, which is fantastic. But, yes, tell us a little bit more about what you planned to do over here in Nantucket. 

Lisa: Yeah, you know, once the boats, the miniboats, landed sort of quickly after they were deployed way back in June and had sort of a short voyage, you know, my thought has always been like, oh, let's get them back out, let's get them back out on the water. And you know, once we kind of when you and I met here in Falmouth and with all of your contacts and getting to meet some of the educators who work in science, education and ocean literacy, marine sciences, my whole, really my whole, thought, you know, I've all been all about let's get them launched, but I think maybe the more important thing is I just see the value and connecting educators. So I would say probably the biggest, biggest positive out of this entire trip has been connecting with people who love to teach kids, who see the value in ocean education, who love our mini boat program and can see, actually see even things beyond what I think I've been seeing, even after a decade's worth of working with the mini boats. You know they have, all you know, some fresh new views of how the mini boats can be used to motivate students, to kind of engage them. You know, meeting those Falmouth educators certainly being able to meet Annie Webber in person. 

07:29

Lisa: We've just been doing a lot of Zoom calls over the last few months and to talk and have more time to talk with her and see, to be honest, to see her level of excitement and you can see the wheels turning for her and the excitement of how she can use the mini boat, the Griffin Cruiser, in her classroom with her kids and hearing her talk about the different people in her school community that she feels that she can make connections with, if it's the history teacher, the geography teacher, the English teacher and, I think, Cassie, - you know you and I talk all the time about. You know, how do we, you know, find ways to use the miniboat in different ways as a vehicle? You know, throughout education, and it's those different connections that I think we're always looking for. How do you do things cross-curricularly? It's just not, you know, a science project, it's not just like a geography project or a club project, but there are lots of ways in which, you know, we can use the mini boat in all disciplines. 

Cassie: Yeah, and I think the Falmouth, so we got to meet with Carmela and she's the STEM coordinator at for all the Falmouth schools, so she helps students from elementary, middle, high school with this really awesome integrated approach and she's they have these projects to really get students, you know, down to the water to collect pond water quality information and you know all these integrated things right, and it was great to hear how the mini boats kind of fit into that and then so we ended up getting to spend a lot more time with Ms. Webber, as we had planned, and it ended up being really great. But let's kind of share why we ended up with a lot more time. 

Lisa: Well, we got over here on what on a Monday and I think Ms Webber said, gee, there we haven't had a snow or snow or a snowstorm here in recent memory. So of course there was a Nor'easter coming up the coast that was hitting on overnight, and Tuesday morning, the morning that we were going to be spending with her students in her classroom, and so of course the snow comes in, schools over and canceled and ferries were canceled for the entire day. Cassie and I were going to be heading back in the afternoon ferry, those were canceled, but again we ended up spending a lot of time with Annie. But I think you and I will agree that almost, given some of the repairs and some of the foreseen issues with a few of the boats, almost bought us the necessary time to be able to get the boats on the ferry today. 

Cassie: Yes, the extra time was definitely needed and we'll talk a little bit about that. We were actually out to dinner with Annie and we got to meet Mary Graves and so we had kind of a "miniboat ladies" dinner, which was really nice. But as we were eating, Annie got the call from the school that schools were canceled the next day. So she connected all of her friends with the school and I don't know how many of us were there like six, seven of us getting the mini boats out of the classroom and bringing them to Annie's house. And she's so wonderful. She moved her dining room table to the side, we put a tarp down and we brought all three mini boats. So this is the Crimson Tide, crimson Current, and she had Gryphon Cruiser in the backyard and so we brought them all inside so that they were not going to get covered in snow. And then we woke up the next day and it was rain and we're like wait, where's the snow? But then it changed pretty quickly and the snow started coming down hard and so we got to drive around the island actually and see the waves on the south shore and the waves on the north shore kind of did our own little experiment of. You know how big were the waves going to be with the Nor'easter coming in, and so we went to the north shore first and the waves were crazy and just you know, we could hardly go outside and look up without the snow pelting our face. But she said that that beach, the water is completely still usually. So that was interesting. But that's a result of the nor’easter, you know, the winds coming from the north. And then we went to the south shore and what was usually rough was actually more calm than the other. So well, that was a fun little adventure for us. So we took some videos to share with students and everyone else, so we'll be sharing that adventure as well. And then we spent the day a couple trips to the hardware store. Some of the boats had some water, which was unexpected. But I think that's also kind of the engineering process, right. Like we can plan for as much as we can and we can bring the tools and we can hope for the best and things happen. Water gets in. That's life. But we spent a full day, but we had so much help, right. So Annie and Lucas was there to help us carry the boats and he actually does a lot of pool work here. So, in terms of having a boat with water and leaks, I think we couldn't have asked for a better crew member than Lucas. We ended up putting spray foam in the hull and it ended up pushing air out of the leaks of the other spots. I thought that was really fun. That was a learning piece for me. So we did a lot of repairs. What was your favorite part about doing the repairs? It's my favorite part. I think it was the teamwork, the crew work. Absolutely. It's definitely not an individual project, these miniboats. 

Lisa: Yeah, "team is the dream!" 

13:07

Cassie: Actually that reminds me of at one point I think I was covered in spray foam and silicone and just I was really in it. And at one point I said, can you remind me why we're doing this? And Annie was in the kitchen. She says "It's for the kids, it's for the ocean!" and I just had a sigh of relief and I was like that is exactly what it is. But in the mix of all the repairs and the trips to the hardware store, it was good to be reminded why we're doing it and to have so much like. You're right, it's teamwork, it's the crew, it's that we're all coming together, the community. Annie's friends were all texting and saying where was this from? And I want to get involved. And so she's going to have middle school involved in all of this and really get people involved. And that's what it's all about, right. 

Lisa: It is and I don't know, if you like, remember we've been, cassie made several handouts. We have these little pamphlets that we've been handing out to anyone who will be willing to listen about the program. So we're out to dinner, there are people sitting on either side of us, we're whipping out our educational passages, a little leaflet for them to read more about. We're dropping the mini boat off at the ferret this morning and there's the luggage handler giving him a pamphlet to read about. 

14:30 – The Ripple Effect

Lisa: So you know so well, cassie, so while we think about, you know, the mini boats as being, you know, so focused on the kids and things like that, I don't know. It would be really great to know how many people over the years have been touched by the mini boat program that maybe aren't educators, but you know everything from, like, the finders to the friends of the finders and you know how many of those people are talking about the little mini boat and, oh, what they know about the mini boat, and I'm sure there are lots of great stories that we just have no idea how exponentially. It's just kind of exploded beyond just the, you know, the educators and the finders. 

Cassie: Beyond the classroom. I was actually going to say exponential as well, it is, right. So it starts with a small class and you know how many students are in your class usually. 

Lisa: Yeah, I've got about 13, 14 kids in a class for each of my classes. 

Cassie: Right, but then you're also doing like naming and you know decorations, and so then you're bringing the whole school. How many are in your school? 

Lisa: We've got about 165 in our middle school, right. 

Cassie: So then it goes from that to 165, and so all of those kids and their parents and their families, and then they hear about it and then they want to get involved and they want to support. And then we have our friends at the independent container line who had launched Crimson Current, Crimson Tide, actually for us, you know, you think about the crews and the families of those crews and they're going home and saying I launched this boat. And then you're right, in the finders it really does grow exponentially. I don't think we'll ever be able to count it all. We're still going to keep doing it and that's what it's all about. So, Lisa, what is next on the Morristown Beard Miss Swanson's sabbatical adventure extraordinaire?

Lisa: You dropped the bombshell that you are definitely going to Ireland in a couple weeks, and so I don't know if we can swing it, but, as you know, Ireland is on my list of places to go during my sabbatical. I wasn't quite thinking I would be going so early like in March, in a few weeks, but that might be something that might find me on your trip. 

Cassie: Well, did I say earlier that it's like you can plan for as much, but things happen and water gets in and life changes. So yeah, kind of maybe a week ago was like let's just go. 

16:56 – Full Circle: Making Global Connections

Cassie: We've got another project called the mini maine, which serendipitously was launched the same day as Crimson Tide back in 2012. So talk about full circle, talk about connections how many people, how many connections? So let's keep those stories going. It was introduced to a student at the University of New England. She has an internship, she's a marine science education double major and a global studies participant. So she's been to Ireland before. And yeah, we just last minute decided let's do this, let's bring the items from the fourth grade students in Biddeford, Maine, and we'll bring them to the students in Ireland and help them do these exchanges and make those personal connections. But while we're there, hey, we've got Crimson Current that landed in Cork. So let's go Barryroe, let's go meet Rory, let's go meet Billy McCarthy. Let's get down to Cork. So yeah, when I was telling you these ideas, if we're going to Ireland, we might as well go meet all of these people along the Western shore that have been such a critical part of the educational passage is mini boat program over the years, over 14 years. That's a lot of things to do. So I'd like to go for a couple of months, but I'm going to have to kind of condense it and I think you're going to have to go with us. 

Lisa: I think I will. I am excited about that, but maybe in the meantime, sandwiched in between our Nantucket trip and Ireland trip, as you know, cassie, I've got that with that, our this year's classes mini boat is down in North Carolina, so that landed a little bit more quickly than we had hoped, right before Christmas. As you know, we've got plans to relaunch our mini boat, hopefully soon. We've got an offer from fishermen who does does fishing off the coast and can get it out to the Gulf Stream. So we've been waiting for more favorable conditions and probably the most, maybe one of the more exciting pieces to this is that the fishermen does tagging of bluefin tuna and is going to be going out and doing that tagging and is offered to launch our mini boat and has invited me to go along. So I have never been on a launch or a relaunch, so this will be fantastic and seeing the tagging of the tuna will be icing on the cake as well. So I'm waiting to hear from Captain Dale to to see when I need to scoot down to North Carolina and get that mini boat launched, so that might be happening in between our trip now and Ireland. 

Cassie: Your sabbatical is off to a good start, I would have to say. 

Lisa: It is off to a fantastic start, so if this is any sign of how things are going to go, I think I'm in for like a real treat for this semester. 

Cassie: Yeah, actually, captain CP Charles Perry, who recovered Howe Hall AIMS Infinity during the Blue Marlin Tournament there made a big splash in New Jersey and North Carolina, connected us with Captain Dale. So again these connections, they come back around. Again it's about the community, it's about reaching out. Hey, can you help us out? And, oh my gosh, you're gonna get to have this awesome experience and you're telling your students about it, right? You've got a Google Classroom, so you're posting things, they're asking questions, all right. So we'll save the rest of that for a future podcast episode with some updates on the North Carolina trip. We'll see how the Ireland trip goes. And then isn't there another that you're planning? 

Lisa: We are. Cassie and I've been working hard. Cassie's been great trying to help me reconnect with a school in Portugal, in Porto, Portugal, that has one of our former mini boats, Crimson Voyager, has been onshore in Portugal for many years and we're looking to get Crimson Voyager. It's ready to go, with the exception of just getting a new GPS put on board. So we have a proposal with some sort of learning objectives, things that I'd like to accomplish and ways in which that we can sort of show our Portuguese counterparts how maybe we can work together and how can be beneficial not only for my students but for theirs as well. 

21:17 – USA Blue Schools

And Morristown Beard is also looking to be an all-Atlantic Blue School, and the school that has a Crimson Voyager is a blue school in Portugal. So it's just again you know, cassie, you talk about kind of the connections and, and so I. This is just perfect for us, because I know we have a lot to learn. We'd love to know, you know, what does an all-Atlantic blue school look like in action? And so it'll be able I can sort of be boots on the ground in Portugal and get to interact with educators that have been kind of walking the walk with this program and as we begin to find ways how we can kind of formulate our own kind of blue school identity at Morristown Beard. 

Cassie: That's great, yeah, and the you know the All-Atlantic blue schools, the USA blue schools, the European blue schools all stemmed from the Escola Azul in Portugal, which is the original blue school, Escola Azul, and we've been working with them for many years. They've had a lot of mini boats washed on shore in Portugal over the years and helped to relaunch them. Their students, all the schools that they they've involved do such a wonderful art project out of it and actually the Crimson Voyager was launched by them once off Madeira and kind of came back around and Crimson Voyager is at a school near in the same area as the legendary which is from New Hampshire and ended up right in the same area. So again, you're also trying to give back to the community and help these other boats get relaunched, just like you're. You're helping Griffin cruiser as well as the two that are on the ferry down below here as we're still chugging along back to shore and and I love that that it's helping everybody else and helping us to connect, and so that's our essential principle of ocean literacy and what the blue schools are all about. 

23:07

Cassie: So maybe we can do a podcast to help Meg and the USA Blue Schools kind of share more what they're doing and and how this mini boat project is helping to make things more full circle. I think the other thing that's nice about connecting everybody together and kind of focusing on this ocean literacy is the how are we connected to each other and how are you connected to the ocean, and so do you want to say something about your - you know, the way you implement the program and you have conversations with your students because you're not right near the beach, right? You're not a coastal community necessarily. So you're doing this program and these boats are landing in these places where lives are kind of different from your students, and I think that's another aspect to this program that's really interesting in those cultural connections can be endless conversations and stories. But do you want to say something about that? 

Lisa: My school is located, probably probably about an hour and 20 minute drive from the Atlantic Ocean and I'll be honest, you know most of my students as they, when they think about the ocean, they're really thinking about, you know, throwing a frisbee on the beach and waiting in the water and it's totally from like a recreational standpoint. 

24:21

Lisa: My students know very little about, I would say, like the the economy of the ocean. Let's say how to do communities that rim the ocean actually use the ocean. So while in geography class we talk a lot about how does where one lives shape the way they live or how do they use resources, how do humans interact with their environment? And so, being in a coastal community, certainly coastal communities are using their environment in ways just beyond recreational use. So I think for my students to interact with students and communities that are true coastal communities, to learn about how these communities depend on the ocean and their dependence on the ocean I think shapes a lot of the ways in which they view the ocean. So it's bringing a whole new narrative to my kids to kind of hear those stories from people who actually live in those communities. 

25:20 - Linking and Supporting Educators: Giving Back

Cassie: Yeah, I mean so many connections. So maybe part of what we can do with this sabbatical trip is and the podcast is to help share some of those connections and the learning with both your students and the places. The miniboats go and kind of share out that so, like when we're in Ireland we can do some interviews with the communities there, what it means to them, and again you've got your Google classroom. We're trying to link that back. You know, also part of this trip was now we have the Falmouth communities, we have Charleston, south Carolina, where Gryphon Cruiser came from originally. We have the Ireland connections. So I think now it's about how do we link everybody together and not make it overwhelming for the teacher, which is another important part. So hopefully educational passages can help out with those zooms, with those connections, and help move all these things forward. 

Lisa: It makes me think, you know again, seeing that you're the person that has to organize all this, but I don't know, maybe the educators that have been touched or involved with educational passages, you know, maybe there's a way in which we can have sort of a clearinghouse of sorts like one area where we can all upload or borrow ideas, that if there's a way to kind of catalog, you know, kind of personalize things that we've done in the classroom, that a teacher could go and just be like, okay, what's an idea for this? What's an idea? Oh, I see, here's something that someone's posted that fits with this category, or you know, I think that might be a good next step. 

Cassie: That's a great idea. For the new boat builders, we started doing these trainings in August. We have our own kind of Google Classroom in itself, but that's for like the new people. This next round let's bring in experts and relaunch teachers and try to help have those conversations with each other and try to grow our capacity to support more educators. So with that, more grants, more funding, more donations how help educational passages keep going? And all of these adventures for years to come. 

27:26

Cassie: You have been listening to the Educational Passages Podcast. Educational Passages is a nonprofit organization. Please consider making a donation to help us continue our work bringing people together to learn more about the ocean, to donate head over to educationalpassages.org. If you're enjoying this program, please consider subscribing to the podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcast or from wherever you download your podcasts. Thanks for listening.