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spring 2006
rocking the boat expands daytime on-water program with Toyota USA Foundation award 
Rocking the Boat is thrilled to announce that the Toyota USA Foundation has contributed more than $166,000 to support the expansion of
our Community On-Water Program. Over the three-year term of the grant, Rocking the Boat will be able to serve not just our 150 primary
after-school and summer participants, but to extend the benefits of the On-Water education program and resources to another 700 young
people from more than a dozen high schools each year. This award marks a major milestone in the evolution of the On-Water program and a
watershed moment institutionally for Rocking the Boat. Just as the On-Water program grew out of the Boatbuilding program - a natural answer to the question, "What should we do with these amazing boats?" - the On-Water Program spawned the Community On-Water Program. It just made good sense to have all the boats, staff, and equipment already in place being used by more people during the school day before the Rocking the Boat students arrived for class at 4pm. Using the substance of the after-school and summer program as a programmatic foundation, Rocking the Boat educators work with classroom teachers to develop curricula that relates to and enhances traditional high school academics. Like the out-of-school program, the daytime program enables high school students to take what they have learned in school and bring it to life in the real world of their local natural resources. Students visit the Rocking the Boat On-Water site on a sustaining basis over each school semester (between two and six times, depending on the school) and have the opportunity to learn to use the fleet of student-built wooden rowing boats and engage in a range of environmental science and maritime skills activities, mirroring the work in that semester of the out-of-school program. These programs are completely free for New York City public schools and priority is given to those schools who can demonstrate a commitment to collaborative program design and a sustaining impact for their students. The Community Environmental Program is giving Rocking the Boat the opportunity to use our youth development methodology to effect curriculum development throughout New York City, encouraging not just students, but teachers, and entire schools to learn academic subjects through the use and awareness of their own local natural environments. We are deeply honored to have received such a prestigious and competitive award and look forward to working closely with the Toyota USA Foundation over the next three years as we immeasurably expand our organization's work. In conjunction with our mid-semester Open House, the Toyota USA Foundation is coming to our On-Water site at Clason Point Park on the evening of Friday, May 5th for a formal check presentation of the Rocking the Boat grant. It will be a great time with boats available for rowing, teachers, parents, and students, home-cooked food catered by Rocking the Boat's parents, and a giant cardboard check made out to Rocking the Boat! As always, but especially in this case, friends of Rocking the Boat are welcome to join in in the celebration. spring 2006 rocking the boat girls rock! Rocking the Boat students reflect on their experience through daily journal writing. Here are excerpts from four girls’ reflections. "My life changed big time since I've been in RTB. People look up to me differently. When people ask me what I do when I'm not at school, I say I work on the Bronx River. They say, 'What? What do you do over there?' When I answer the question, I feel unique."
"Yes, I would love to come back to RTB for the next semester because what I have experienced in this program was great and fun. I have learned new things that I could also use at the house. I really like this place for some reason. When I'm at the shop it's like I'm in a new different world - I don't have to worry about anything else but the work that I'm assigned to and my responsibilities."
"I would describe RTB in three letters - F.U.N. F is for fun and friendly, U is unconditional friendship bonds and N is for new experiences every week. I would be very, very interested in coming back next semester. This has become my escape and release shrine-temple place. Please consider this. Also I have a soft spot for wood."
"“When I'm at the shop I get a sense of pride and achievement. Because when I was a student and every day we would finish working on the boat and I would always look at the boat and say to myself ‘I helped get us this far into finishing the boat.’ Every time I think of how I helped make a sail boat it makes me feel all bubbly inside. Even for my mom when she's at work she doesn't only brag about how I help her a lot or how I'm an honor student, she now says that she has a working daughter that builds boats, it makes me feel proud that I've done so much and I'm only 17 years old (imagine what life holds for me) ... It makes me feel so cool because not a lot of people get the chance to be in programs like this.”
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