Anali Vasquez and Janet Mendez, Brooklyn Boatworks

Brooklyn Boatworks is a grassroots nonprofit-educational organization started by two naval architects named Jeremy Wurmfeld and Carl Persak. For the past two years, Jeremy and Carl have set up their shop in the Carroll Gardens based School for Collaborative Studies. They teach the principles and mechanics of basic boat building and indeed they assist the students in constructing an 8-foot wooden rowboat. This year Anali Vasquez joins Brooklyn Boatworks as a full-fledged teaching assistant and naval architect in training. This is the first year that the organization has taken on an intern and according to Carl, it seems to be working out exceedingly well. Janet also began attending Boatworks workshops on Tuesdays because her internship at Bromley Companies was only intending to host one day a week. However due to Janet's stellar performance, Bromley would like to have her for both days and she has accepted.

Rest assured Anali holds it down on her own. On Thursday she works at the site independently preparing Tuesday's lessons and setting up the room. She is in continual phone contact with her mentors Carl and Jeremy and is directly supervised if need be by the assistant principle of the School for Collaborative Studies. She has designed several basic marine engineering lessons in a progression leading toward a complete understanding of density. This includes basic concepts of area, volume, and mass. Anali designs these lessons using her own personal experience and a maritime curriculum guide produced specifically for elementary students. In her own words, the kids "get it" quickly and she has been able to move quite quickly in her coverage of the material.

During the Tuesday afternoon workshop which I was fortunate to observe, there were 6 kids working simultaneously on lofting (tracing designs, cutting, and fitting boat parts) while another 3-4 worked in the hallway with Anali and Janet on the engineering lessons. Everything seemed to work quite smoothly . Kids looked very engaged and could understand and appreciate the entire process by seeing two finished boats from years past. Indeed they seemed to be getting it quite readily, and even having fun.