Helping Kids Thrive Through Boating

On the last Friday morning of October 2023, the waters in Newport, Rhode Island’s Brenton Cove were still and quiet, as most of the boats usually moored there had already been hauled out for the season. But along the adjacent waterfront headquarters of Sail Newport, the city’s renowned public sailing center, a handful of instructors were suiting up, and the vibe was cheerful and expectant. That’s when the yellow school bus pulled in, as it had every weekday for the previous seven weeks, and a raucous posse of several dozen fourth graders from Newport’s Pell Elementary School spilled out. Instantly, the mellow, tranquil shoreside scene was transformed into something charged and electric. Why? The kids were going sailing, and they couldn’t wait.

While half the crew marched upstairs for the morning’s dedicated classroom session, the other half tugged on their life jackets and spread out among the five 22-foot J/22 sailboats lined up dockside as the instructors sang out coaching and praise:

“Every time you pull on a line, something’s going to happen.”

“Remember, the lower we are, the safer we are.”

“Good teamwork! Excellent problem-solving!”

“One hand for yourself, one hand for the boat. What do I mean by that?”

And then, quickly and efficiently, the docklines were dropped, the sails were set, and they were off. Just two months earlier, despite living in the so-called “City by the Sea,” most of these children had never been on a boat before. Now? They commanded their tillers like old salts. What in the watery world was happening here? It’s a major success story, and one that could perhaps serve as an example and inspiration for other young students and schools in America’s seaside communities.

Building success through boating needed buy-in

The Pell Elementary School Science and Sailing Program – its official title – was started in 2017 by Sail Newport’s program director Kim Hapgood, and Donna Kelly, a member of the Sail Newport board of directors and a teacher at Pell. They wanted to give Newport children meaningful access to the waterfront and to sailing programs, where they believed they’d thrive. The organization’s executive director, Brad Read, fully supported the idea of a team partnership between the Newport School District and Sail Newport. That was the same year Sail Newport opened its new 8,500-square-foot Mid-Park Marine Education and Recreation Center, a state-of-the-art structure with dedicated classrooms, at its facility on Fort Adams State Park. “

We built the center knowing that we couldn’t really expand education unless there was classroom space,” said Read. “The building has become our field of dreams. We put together a really cool plan to entice schools to come here, and then link a standards-based curriculum with learning how to sail and incorporating all the life lessons that sailing can bring to a 10-year-old child. Our overall mission is about public access to sailing and sailing-related programs, and what better public is there than public schools? This has been our greatest outreach into the community. I’d call it our signature program now.”

To transform that vision into reality, Hapgood required major buy-in from the local elementary school. She found the perfect advocate for their cause in Kelly, at the time a kindergarten teacher at Pell.

“Over the years Donna and I had conversations about what it would be like in a perfect world if we could provide the opportunity for every kid going through the Newport school system to come down and learn how to sail and have access to the water in a meaningful way, beyond just a one-time field trip,” said Hapgood. “Donna understood that. She’s a sailor. She could see how impactful it could be. She was absolutely key to selling it to the other teachers and convincing them it was going to be worth their time to get on the bus with the kids and come here to teach, as opposed to their usual comfortable, familiar classrooms.” Once the concept was issued a green light, the next question was a tricky one: What grade should be targeted? It turned out to be a simple answer.

“In the fifth grade and above, in Rhode Island at least, the kids rotate classes, so they have a different math teacher, different science teacher, and so on,” said Cortney Kingsley, a former teacher and sailing instructor who now serves as Sail Newport’s education programs manager. “But fourth grade was ideal because they’re still with the same classroom teacher all day long, they’re not rotating. And at age 10 or 11, they have the muscle strength to trim the mainsheet or handle the tiller. And they’re at that age where they really love school, and love to learn. So fourth grade was kind of our sweet spot.”

The program is run in two distinct mandatory eight-week sessions, one in the fall, one in the spring. For the 2023-2024 school year, there were 152 students spread over seven fourth-grade classes, all of which made their way to the waterfront one morning every week. On most days, a pair of classes arrive, and while one group makes their way to the water, the other heads upstairs to the classroom, after which they swap places. At the beginning of each term, every student is issued a workbook focused on each week’s lesson plan. It’s important to note that what’s taught in the classroom and what’s experienced on the water are expressly designed to complement one another – a truly holistic approach to learning.

“The teachers identified the academic topics in the curriculum that they’re required to teach in the classroom,” said Hapgood. “From those, they’ve chosen the topics that lend themselves to being taught when they’re out here at Sail Newport. For example, take meteorology. How do you tell what the weather will be on a given day? How do you create a forecast? How can you measure wind strength, direction, and so on? In the lesson plans, we’ve added in teaching the kids sailing skills, both the practical side and a little bit of theory. The instructors know what each week’s lesson is, and how to highlight it.”

How to pay for a signature program

An important point is that, beyond the time commitment from the teachers and students, the Newport school system has no outlay, financial or otherwise. The program’s costs are completely covered by Sail Newport, which pays for the buses ($5,000 per semester), classroom materials, the instructor’s salaries, and so on. Many on-water instructors are seasonal staff with Sail Newport; a few are volunteers who are professionals in other areas and want to help kids succeed.

With an annual budget cresting $100,000, Sail Newport raises the money through private philanthropy, fundraisers, and multiple grants from local organizations – such as 11th Hour Racing, which utilizes sailing events and sponsorships to heighten awareness of ocean health and environmental causes. In fact, 11th Hour’s recurring grants have helped to both establish a small endowment for the Sail Newport fourth-grade program and fund a related one called the Marine Exploration Program, a successful after-school addition geared toward sixth and seventh graders that builds upon their earlier fourth-grade experiences. With the fourth-grade program operating since 2017, many of those original children have now returned to participate in two years of the after-school middle-school program, and the Sail Newport team can see how the original program has helped them to stay focused and grow.

“It’s a really cool pipeline to keep them sailing,” said Kingsley, who manages the four five-week middle-school sessions, which focus on different aspects of sailing, powerboating, and marine science. “The main thing we also do with the middle-school students is expose them to careers in the marine industry and make the connection of where they live in Rhode Island and the opportunities they have near the water. We take them to meet sailmakers and boatbuilders and marine electricians, and learn about their backgrounds and their jobs. Here are all these great career options they might not otherwise know about. We want them to know that all this is in the town where they live. We want them to be comfortable along the waterfront and feel close and connected to the ocean for their whole lives.”

Would the program work in your community?

This all leads to an exciting question: If it’s working so well in Newport, what about other seaside communities? “I absolutely believe that it could work elsewhere,” said Hapgood, who said there already are a few in-school programs elsewhere in the country. “I’m a huge advocate. We get phone calls all the time: ‘How’d you decide about how big your staff is? What factors did you take into consideration when designing your building?’ Different communities would have to tweak it to make it fit their constituency. But yes, it’s transferrable.” (Contact Hapgood at KimHapgood@SailNewport.org with any questions.)

As far as concrete, quantifiable academic results are concerned, Hapgood and the teachers have lots of anecdotal evidence that the program generates meaningful outcomes. She related the recent story of a fourth-grade girl who was a bit of a troublemaker who realized she wouldn’t be able to join her classmates on the water if she went astray. “She asked the teacher what else she needed to do to stay on her best behavior,” Hapgood said. “She knew if she misbehaved or didn’t do her homework, she wouldn’t be able to participate. She got it. Her teacher said there was no doubt that the experience was a positive, constructive one for her.”

Now that the program is in its fifth year, two different studies are currently underway to produce data to prove that, for participating students, reading scores go up, math skills get better, and overall academic performance improves.

Fourth-grade teacher Thomas Milburn has been involved with the program since 2019 and has come to appreciate how he approaches his work.

“My first impressions were mostly about the opportunity the program provided for many kids who’ve probably never had such an experience. This was a source of excitement for the students. As a teacher, my goal is to utilize the opportunity to connect the science we’re doing in the classroom to real world experiences. The students get the opportunity to, for example, not only create a classroom model that demonstrates the process and result of erosion, but then also experience this firsthand while at Sail Newport. So, from that point of view, utilizing those opportunities really enhances the curriculum. The sailing aspect is a bonus that helps the students not only learn about sailing but also continue to develop life skills such as communication and working together.”

On that last Friday of October, the day’s lesson plan indeed focused on fossils and erosion, and as the students sailed by nearby Beacon Rock on the opposite side of the cove, they not only noted the tide line, but also all the nooks, crannies, and caves created by the water and waves rushing through – the power of erosion. The changing landscape wasn’t just a picture in a book or a story by a teacher. From the cockpit of their sailboat, surrounded by their mates, it was right there in front of them, almost close enough to touch. They got it.