Three Days Aboard the Adventuress
It is truly an amazing age we live in when our twelve and thirteen year-olds can experience what it was like to ply the seas in a hundred year-old sailing vessel!
The seventh grade had the great fortune to spend three September days aboard The Adventuress, a teaching ship operated out of Port Townsend, Washington, at the start of the new school year. The trip was not a typical one, but neither are Cedarwood’s seventh graders typical students.
The class truly demonstrated how Waldorf’s incredible curriculum and Cedarwood’s values can be brought to life in our children’s experiences.
The captain of the ship let me know that this trip would push the students beyond their comfort zones, and that they would be supported and encouraged by a trained crew of sailor educators to reach for more inside of themselves. He told me they would be asked to stay up late and get get up at odd hours of the night; to living in very close quarters, elbow to elbow with their classmates; and to make do with very limited water and power resources.
At the same time, our students were expected to be reliable and friendly members of the crew, learning and experiencing every moment to its fullest.
What the captain and crew had not anticipated was how hard this class was willing to work to meet these expectations.
Though the conditions were not comfortable, our students showed real spirit, adapting and opening up to the experience.
This trip was physically very strenuous. The quarters were extremely tight and no one enjoyed much privacy. The one hundred foot wooden sailing vessel contains one private cabin — and that is reserved for the captain! For three days we lived at sea, organized into “watches” in order to divide up time between classes on mechanics and mechanical advantage (a physics block of study undertaken in seventh grade); marine biology lessons (there is so much living in the Salish Sea water!); and, most importantly, the navigation and ship technology skills needed to actually sail the ship.
Our watches ran 24 hours a day. All through the night, students took turns in groups to keep lookout on board. They watched for glow-in-the-dark bioluminescence in the water, checked the ship’s positioning at regular intervals, and marveled at the changing constellations and other marine life visible at night.
The class impressed the crew with their curiosity, humor, and personalities. They were thoroughly themselves: caring for and supporting each other through an incredible three days of adventure.
They sang four-part harmony ballads on deck, giggled under the stars, and made up skits to entertain the crew and each other. All those years of reduced media really paid off! These students know how to entertain themselves with their own creativity and sparkle.
The students were remarkably courageous on this trip. Most of the class climbed aloft, hand-over-hand on a swaying rope ladder up the mast to the main cross bar 95 feet over deck. Some stopped in fear as they climbed, but with determination in their hearts, onward they went to the top! They also climbed out on the bowsprit over the open water on nothing but net!
This experience we shared was not a vacation. It was an enlivening learning experience that surpassed all expectations.
The class was able to embrace the trip because of the history of our time together at Cedarwood. Our trust in each other — and my own trust in each student’s ability to make safe choices while on such a venture — are the direct result of the value we place in treating each other with respect, dignity, accountability, and love here at school.
Our experience on the waters of the Puget Sound this fall may be unique, but our experience of becoming a team that learns together, supports each other, and embraces the world around us with love and curiosity is not special to the seventh grade class.
I see each and every class at Cedarwood doing just this, and look forward to the time they will get to spend together aboard a ship like The Adventuress.
Donna Blaser holds a BA from the University of Oregon in Spanish and Latin American studies, as well as a Bachelor of Fine Arts. She completed her Waldorf teacher training at the Micha-el Institute, and began her teaching career at Cedarwood in 2001. Donna has taught every grade level at least once. She especially loves the arts-based Waldorf curriculum, and can often be found in the hallways, smudged with paint, charcoal, or glue, hanging art from a recent project.