The Impractical, Wonderful Project
By Martin S. Richter

Clare Boothe Luce said, "No good deed goes unpunished." This is never truer than when we teachers dare to dream big. Every creative teacher can tell the story of a "white elephant" project they had. These projects usually start out as a big, beautiful dream and then mushroom out of control. This is my story of one such experience.

• Begin Project

An auspicious beginning. It all began when my class read an excerpt from David Macaulay's book, Ship (Houghton Mifflin, 1993), which details the process of Spanish shipbuilding in the fifteenth century. As we were reading I thought, "Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could also build a caravel according to Mr. Macaulay's instructions! I bet we could make it out of newspaper."

Excited about a hands-on project for my students that would enhance reading comprehension as well as their knowledge of history, I set out to do some research at the library. It seems that blueprints of the ships were not as readily available as I had assumed. I then spent the entire afternoon cobbling together blueprints from illustrations I found in various books. I couldn't wait to get home so I could sketch these on graph paper and assemble a small tabletop model.

Fasten Ribs

The danger signal. Drawing the blueprints took a little longer than I'd estimated, but soon my model came together. I quickly made a few decisions about scale, order of assembly, criteria for teams and storage places within my classroom. My students would have an experience they'd remember for the rest of their lives. This would be a remarkable adventure for us all!

As you've probably guessed, at this point I was a bit too enthused about this project. I should have sensed the danger signal and its ominous implication: I was going to see this through, no matter what obstacles I encountered along the way. And trust me, there were plenty.

A wake-up call? The next day, I called a room parent who worked for the local newspaper. He was very helpful and told me that he could get me all the old newsprint I needed and asked about how much I had in mind. This question had not yet occurred to me. Luckily, I knew to overestimate, figuring I could use the excess for art or science activities. At that point, I had not yet realized that I would also need to find classroom space for a six-foot stack of newspaper.

Stringers

This problem was my wake-up call. I would not be surprised again during this project. I spent nights planning, envisioning and anticipating every facet of the project. The more absorbed I became, the more my excitement grew. There was no stopping this freight train.

I was shocked to learn that not everyone shared my enthusiasm. The principal regarded my request for 20 rolls of masking tape with some alarm. The custodian was also less than thrilled as I accumulated "trash" in my classroom. My students, however, trusted that building our own caravel could be done.

Making Transom

New problems. I scheduled our first project session for 45 minutes. It took an hour and a half. In that time, we had finished one plank. "Oh well," I rationalized. "There's bound to be a lot of 'investment instruction' during the first day. Things will go smoother tomorrow." They didn't.

For three weeks, new problems arose each day. Small inaccuracies in the tabletop model became huge blunders in the eight-foot ship. The newspaper logs buckled and sagged under their own weight. The ship was too big to get through the doorway. Just when my brain was about to explode, a miraculous thing occurred. My students began solving the engineering problems themselves.

Attaching Transom

A sudden turn of events. I watched as my students argued at lunch, drew solutions in their construction journals and carefully inspected the ship before class. During our work sessions, they talked, gestured and experimented. The kids who were not accustomed to excelling in school discovered their talents for building and managing, and my usual overachievers learned to defer respectfully to these students' superior abilities. My wish for this project had finally come true – I had passed my enthusiasm along to my students and they were running the show.

After a few more weeks, we invited other classes to "tour" our ship. My students answered all of our guests' questions, reported on the history of caravels and explained our construction process, using proper nautical and math terminology. My students' construction journals also provided valuable information about the small struggles that were won and lost during the process.

Securing Ratlines

Our caravel's final hurrah came at the school art show. It dominated the display by sheer size although, by this time, the six-foot main mast had begun to sag and fall. After everyone went home that day, the school custodian cheerfully "scuttled" our ship.

Finishing Touches

So, was it worth it? My students experienced real-world math and physics problems, which they solved through teamwork.
Many discovered abilities they never knew they had. The kids delivered knowledgeable presentations to younger students and learned about history and nautical vocabulary. Weigh this against the fact that this project swallowed up unbelievable amounts of time and space and nearly killed me, and I think you know the answer – I've repeated this project for the past five years.

• Finished Project

Even in this era of pencil-and-paper testing, we teachers must continue to inspire our children with our big, impractical dreams. Where else but in an elementary school can these things become real for kids? Child-hood is over much too quickly and the experiences my students gained have become the stuff of the rest of their lives.

Martin S. Richter teaches fifth grade at Ross Elementary School in Pittsburgh's North Hills school district.

May 2006, Vol.36, No.8