SOUTH BRISTOL, Maine — It was a day for endings and beginnings, with small boats serving as a metaphor for young lives.
Hours before they graduated from elementary school, the small eighth-grade class at the South Bristol School launched the boats they had been building for most of the school year. Those skiffs, as locals call them, slid into the harbor as horns blasted, and a crowd of parents, students, and townspeople cheered their approval.
The school’s boat building program began 27 years ago as a special feature of the eighth-grade year and has become so popular and successful that schools in several other midcoast towns had copied it.
The students spend one day each week at the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath, where staff and volunteers help them learn to design and build the 10-foot wooden boats.
"They learn to work with their minds and their hands and their hearts,” school Principal Chuck Hamm said. “And they learn teamwork. And that, above and beyond everything they do, that’s a great message they will take with them the rest of their lives.”
The annual boat building project also shows a real-life example of the value of some classroom lessons, according to teacher Amanda Sykes, who was a member of the school’s first boatbuilding class in 1996.
"It was amazing because we were using the things we learned in math class while building a boat. 'Experiential learning' before it was a buzzword in education,” Sykes said.
She said the memory of that launch day is still vivid, 27 years later.
"And thinking five eighth-graders came into this program, not knowing what would happen, if it would ho anywhere, and we made a boat and got in it, and it floated, and we rowed out into the Gut (the harbor), and it was great."
Comments from the class of 2023 voiced similar feelings.
"I didn’t think I could build anything,” Chris McDonald said.
"It's an amazing experience,” Ben Kress agreed. “It was fun to build the boat but also learning along the way was amazing. I’ll never forget this.”
The others chimed in with their agreement, saying teamwork was essential to getting the two boats completed. Teamwork also was needed as the eight students lifted one of the skiffs and loaded it beside the other on a boat trailer.
Then, after short speeches and christening each boat with a bottle of non-alcoholic sparkling cider, it was time for launch.
As horns blared, one boat with four boys and another with four girls both slid into the water and floated free. Young hands grabbed the oars, and the Class of 2023 was off and rowing.
The rest of the school was there to cheer, the younger kids likely thinking ahead to when it will be their turn to build and launch boats.
"It was such a great culminating ending to our year and ending elementary school and going to high school,” Amanda Sykes recalled of her launch day 27 years ago.
For the boats, this may be their first and last day in the water for a while. One will be given to Maine Maritime Museum to use for fundraising.
The other will be kept by the school and raffled off to raise money for next year's boatbuilding program.
For the Class of '23, the launch will likely be what they remember most about graduation day. They may recall the feeling of accomplishment, those first moments, floating free in their boats, showing how much their minds, hands and hearts can achieve. Life and possibility stretching before them, like the open water beyond the harbor, beckoning them, perhaps, to row.