Science and Engineering Through Sailing

Not all scientific learning happens in the classroom. In fact, sometimes it comes in the form of heavy waves and a pair of sails.

A recent Forbes article highlights the Community Boating Center in Providence, RI, who, several years ago, partnered with the Providence After School Alliance to teach kids about math, science, and boating.

“All sailing is really about science and math. You’re immersed in it, whether you recognize it or not,” John O’Flaherty, the program’s director, told Forbes.

According to the article, O’Flaherty and the After School Alliance put together a summer program for middle-schoolers which consists of two days in the classroom and two more out on the water. “We added a very under-toned dash of science to the sailing,” O’Flaherty said. “The next day in class, the teacher used the on-water experience as a springboard for discussion of the science behind it.”

The author writes that the students responded much more to the classroom work when they were invested in the outcome of their learning. Evidently, the prospect of the boat outing enhanced their attentiveness. O’Flaherty attributes it to the “magic of sailing.”

“If you learn the lessons,” he told the author, “you get to harness these invisible forces—wind, currents, tides—and use them to go fast, which is fun and exciting.”

O’Flaherty, the article goes on to say, wasn’t satisfied with just one small program. He connected with US Sailing representative Jessica Servis, who helped develop a curriculum that later became known as REACH.

“Sailing is like sticking kids in a real-life interactive lab every day,” Servis told Forbes. “Everyone knew it had a great STEM connection, but there was no curriculum that spoke to teachers and schools, met education frameworks, and could be implemented by a community-sailing center.”

After three years of development, the REACH program launched in 2012, and now serves as a model for similar programs all across the country.