wild places | wild happenings | wild news
make a difference for our wild places

home | links | search the site
  all articles latest | past | articles by topics | search wildnews
wild news on wildsingapore
  Business Times 22 Feb 07
Fancy a round-the-world floating school?
By Vincent Wee

 Today Online 2 Feb 07
A class apart on the seven seas
For the 48 students in the Class Afloat programme, the world is literally their classroom
Lee U-Wen

IMAGINE taking a biology class in Australia one week, then studying sociology in Fiji the next, before moving on to the Suez Canal in Egypt to attend a history lesson.

Such an itinerary is part and parcel of the Class Afloat programme, where classes take place out at sea on a 55-metre tall ship called the SV Concordia.

The Canadian non-profit private school has, quite literally, taken teaching and learning outside the confines of the physical classroom. Now into its 23rd year, Class Afloat accepts a batch of 48 privileged teenagers every year and brings them to no fewer than 20 countries in four continents in the space of one year, docking at various ports of call and letting students and teachers roam a different city nearly every week.

Now in town for a short stopover at the Raffles Marina in Tuas, the school's head Kate Knight welcomed Lee U-Wen (u-wen@mediacorp.com.sg) on board yesterday to give him a sneak peek of this unique brand of learning which it aptly terms "Your Passport to Education".

How are students picked and what do they learn?

This is a university preparatory programme, so our students are mostly aged 16 to 19 years old. We choose those who are academically motivated, are interested in experiential learning, and they have to be strong swimmers too, of course. There's a lot of hiking involved when we dock at various ports, so fitness is important. Our students are mostly from Canada and the United States, but we are slowly expanding our international pool too. Just recently we had two students from Japan and one from China. Eventually, we hope that we can have 50 per cent of the cohort coming from overseas.

What we teach is actually a full complement of traditional high school subjects such as Physics, English, Chemistry, but students also learn subjects like Anthropology and Philosophy.

Share with us one type of lesson that is unlikely to be experienced in any other classroom.

We offer the same academic courses, but in a very unique, enriched way. For example, I taught Social Studies and we started our year in Hawaii, where we visited Pearl Harbour and that was where World War Two began for the Americans. What's best is we ended our year in Hiroshima, Japan, where the war ended.

Or take our marine biology class, a teacher could get her students to put on their snorkelling gear and dive into the water and identify different kinds of fish! That's the type of learning we can offer, and our students absolutely love it. They like the idea of actually studying and getting to pick up some seamanship skills as well.

What's a typical school day like? Students wake up at seven in the morning, have a half-hour of fitness, followed by breakfast and a morning meeting. We raise the flag of the country we are visiting, and we make announcements for the day. Students then go on cleaning duties, because it takes a whole team to keep the vessel clean. Classes are next, where they have four to five hours of lessons scattered throughout the day. A trained chef prepares all meals that they eat. At the end of the day, they have two hours of what we call "deck watch". They are put in groups to set sails, clean, paint, whatever it takes to maintain the ship. The students are an important part of the crew.

Teachers in "normal" schools get a break from the students when they finish work and go home. But for all the staff on board here, you're stuck out at sea with no escape! How do you and your staff deal with this, having a lack of personal space to yourselves when you want it?

(Laughs) Yes, we can't revert to our other roles such as a husband or wife or mother anytime we want! But when we hire, we look for a very special kind of teacher, someone who wants to work in a boarding school environment. The teacher here is not just a facilitator, but also a surrogate parent and mentor too. This is a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week job, but we're all used to it.

For me, my "down time" is sitting on the deck and talking to the students, about anything under the sun except school. The students are like my little sisters or brothers. It is a demanding job.

What are the most, and least, popular cities that the students have visited? Apia in Western Samoa is one of the favourites, because of the culture and the rare chance to visit the island. I'd say, one of the least embraced city is Noumea in New Caledonia, because students said it was expensive.

For many of our North American students, Hawaii wasn't seen as that fantastic because culturally, it's not much different from what they are used to at home. My favourite ports are Vietnam and Easter Island, they were very quiet, very out-of-the-way, exotic and for many of us, these are places that we would not normally get the chance to visit.

Our ship can really go to every place imaginable. The possibilities are endless.

This is the second time in three years that Class Afloat has come to Singapore. I understand that some Government officials are visiting the ship to learn from your experiences. Are you looking for any tie-ups here?

We were last here in February 2004, where we had a short exchange programme with Anderson Junior College. We got to visit the school, and the teachers and students taught us about Singaporean culture and we played games and activities. They also took us on tours of the city and brought us to Little India and Fort Canning Park. This time, some students want to go to Pulau Ubin for cycling, and also do some shopping. We like to balance our port visits with some small islands as well as the big cities.

Today, we are having some Singapore educationists coming over and they want to learn from what we offer, and vice versa. We want to pick up new ideas from teachers and principals we meet, because we're always growing our programme.

Also, it would be great if we could get some Singaporean students to sign up with us. I don't think we've had anybody from Singapore before, and they could bring plenty of diversity to the classroom.

Visit www.classafloat.com to find out more about Class Afloat and how to register for the next semester.

Business Times 22 Feb 07
Fancy a round-the-world floating school?
By Vincent Wee

GOING away to sea is something young people often dream about. On the Canadian-run Class Afloat programme, students from 16 to 19 years old can do that while completing their education as well.

The one-year programme is run by the Nova Scotia-based West Island College International, with students able to complete their high school education at the end of the year.

The difference, however, is that it offers people the chance to do a standard school curriculum in a completely novel setting - a 57-metre-long traditionally rigged sailing ship called the Concordia.

The ship was in Singapore recently on the South-east Asian sector of its journey around the world. Students, of course, do the requisite school subjects like English, Mathematics, Chemistry and Physics.

But more practically based courses like oceanography, marine biology and anthropology take on a new dimension when they are run on a ship-based programme like Class Afloat's because it lets them learn through first-hand experience.

The school year is divided into a land-based component and a sea-based one. The land-based programme at the college's campus in Lunenberg, Nova Scotia, prepares students for their time away at sea.

The four to five months ashore help them build a cohesive group with the students with which they will be going to sea. They will also be able to take an active role in planning for their voyage to foreign destinations.

Since its inception in 1984, the programme has seen over 1,000 students graduate, visited over 250 ports in six continents, and logged more than 600,000 nautical miles at sea.

In quantitative terms, the success of the programme may be gauged by the fact that most of these students have got into the universities and colleges of their choice and have been granted more than C$2 million (S$2.6 million) in academic scholarships.

But more than that, Class Afloat's organisers like to cite qualities that their students leave with as the true mark of their success. These include the passion that marks their life choices and the differences that they have made in the lives of those around them.

The development of the itineraries on the programme are determined by a number of factors, chief among which are safety, climate, favourable sailing conditions and politically stable environments.

The course supervisors also take into account the academic suitability of each port of call - the combination of shipboard lessons with hands-on fieldwork is key to the curriculum.

At present about 70 per cent of the students attending are from Canada, with another 20 per cent or so coming from the US, and a very small proportion of less than 10 per cent coming from other countries.

The school's head, Kate Knight, is keen to encourage more international students to participate in the programme so that more cross-cultural exchanges and a broader range of experiences can take place.

Less than 3 per cent of the programme's alumni have come from Asia, she adds. Ms Knight cites the value of learning lessons experientially and the ability to do primary research right out in the field as a big advantage.

Oceanography and marine biology lessons are obviously a lot more interesting with the laboratory right outside the porthole, and students gain a fresh perspective in geography lessons when they are able to visit and see all the places they learn about first-hand.

In addition, other aspects of the programme like global citizenry and greater social and political awareness help develop character.

This is part and parcel of visiting an average of nearly 20 ports in the course of the semester that the students spend out at sea on the programme. This includes going to destinations as diverse as the Baltic ports in Europe, Dakar in Senegal, places in South America, as well as ports in South-east Asia, including Singapore.

The concept has seen some interest from Singapore's Ministry of Education and the National Institute of Education, who are keen to make use of the experiential learning system to develop their staff and curricula further.

The Class Afloat programme helps young people set their sights farther, both literally and figuratively.
links
Related articles on Singapore: general environmental issues
about the site | email ria
  News articles are reproduced for non-profit educational purposes.
 

website©ria tan 2003 www.wildsingapore.com