The 7th-graders at Old Rochester Regional Junior High School present for the final full week of school from June 18-22 took place in another of the school’s 40+ years tradition – S.C.O.P.E week – Student Centered Opportunity for Personal Enhancement, giving students a chance to learn while learning about themselves and each other.
Kathy Gauvin, a teacher at ORR Junior High, said S.C.O.P.E. week is a collaborative effort between the teachers of the blue and red teams at the school and has a different event or outing planned for each day of the week.
“The week is just so nice because it’s a time when the classroom is outside in a different structure so it’s so much more relaxed for the kids,” said Gauvin. “It’s an opportunity to do things with your classmates that you might not necessarily get to do – outside the classroom.”
One day it’s a cruise in Newport, Rhode Island, another it’s a day of roller-skating, and another day, which was Wednesday, June 22 this year, was one of teamwork that culminated along the shore of the Mattapoisett YMCA, where it is, one could say, a survival of the floatest.
For seven years now, students have worked together in teams of four designing and constructing cardboard boats using nothing but duct tape to hold them together.
“It’s a design challenge for them I guess you could say,” said Gauvin. “It’s something they do on their own and then they work outside of the classroom and bring it in.”
As tradition dictates, the teams arrive on the beach at the Mattapoisett YMCA to see which ones float and which ones are the fastest to the finish line.
They have plenty of time to make their boats – months, in fact. But, as Gauvin pointed out, not all of them use the full months-long planning process. Some get started the day before the race, she noted.
“Depending upon how much work they put into it, you can have a boat that lasts forever, or one that doesn’t get past the dock,” she said. “I’ve had some boats [in the past] that were incredible.”
The teams decide which two of the four members will actually test out the boats on the day of the race, and the teams are timed as they paddle their way to the finish – unless they sink before they make it there, of course.
“It really is a nice kind of community event because parents, families, and friends will go,” Gauvin said. “It’s a nice community event and the teachers get to meet the parents.”
This year’s first place team was Caitlin Collyer, Sakurako Huynh-Aoyama, Quinn O’Brien-Nichols, and Julia Foye with their boat “Funky Monkey”, with O’Brien-Nichols and Foye at the helm that morning.
By Jean Perry
