Edgewood Middle School students took to the water Friday with cardboard boats that were part of a schoolwide project-based unit incorporating a book about an Olympic rowing team.
The project-based unit incorporated “The Boys in the Boat” by Daniel James Brown.
Edgewood Principal JoElla Hauselman said Warsaw Community Schools Superintendent Dr. David Hoffert “encouraged us to read ‘The Boys in the Boat.’ And I held it up to my staff in January and said, ‘OK, this is the book we want to read. What can we do with it?’ And this is what it turned into.”
"The Boys in the Boat” follows the true story of the University of Washington’s rowing team as they rowed their way to gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Members of the rowing team included Joe Rantz.
In 2006, Warsaw Community Schools students wrote a letter to Rantz explaining they were history students studying U.S. history and wanted to know about Rantz’s experience in the Olympics.
The letter gave Rantz’s daughter, Judy, the chance to write a 10-page document about Rantz’s experience. After Rantz’s death, a neighbor decided to write “The Boys in the Boat” about Rantz’s story
Hauselman said the school read the book, built prototypes for their cardboard boats and then the actual boat. On Tuesday, Edgewood students will watch the movie.
Hauselman said Edgewood is a STEM school, so they encourage teachers to do project-based units and STEM activities, but the school has never done a schoolwide project-based unit before and they wondered if they could do it. The idea was to get everybody on board.
Hauselman said 500 students participated in the project-based learning unit and “everybody did something.” There were 30 teams and boats.
Each team was comprised of a teacher’s student resource time (SRT) class. Hauselman said each teach had to create a theme, design, team spirit and flag.
Friday’s event was in two parts. The first part was a competition in the Edgewood parking lot where the boats were judged based on various themes.
The second part was a race in the Warsaw Community High School pool to see who will place for gold, silver or bronze for the fastest time in each grade. When it came down to the rowing of the boats, each boat was allowed two rowers, Hauselman said.
The winners for seventh grade were gold medal for fastest boat, Bowald's SRT; silver, Netzley's SRT; bronze, Fisher's SRT; and best theme, Mullen's SRT.
The winners for eighth grade were gold medal for fastest boat, Mr. Heckaman's SRT; silver, Mrs. Helser's SRT; bronze, Ringler's SRT; and best theme, Richcreek's SRT, according to information provided by Hauselman.
Hauselman said she hopes students learned about science, math, engineering, technology, teamwork, collaboration and trusting each other.
Edgewood is looking to do the project-based unit again in two years.
“When we do this again, we’re all ready looking at how we judge the first part of the day. We think we can do it a little bit more streamline because the kids want to take a look at each other’s boats, too, and they didn’t get a chance to do that, so we will fix that part of that,” she said.
She said the best part of the event was all the smiles, cheering, teamwork, “kids that don’t do a lot maybe during the regular school day have gotten actively engaged in this and kids that don’t smile a lot have had a lot of fun,” she said. She said it’s been one of the best days watching the students learn and have fun. “It’s been one of the highlights of my career.”
Hoffert said, “This is such a great event when you look at a schoolwide read that has happened coupled with the local history that goes into this New York Times best-selling book, along with Judy, Joe Rantz’s daughter, actively involved in the learning and then have a showcase of this afternoon. You know, when I walked around, the thing I kept thinking about was seeing inspired teachers, inspired students equals inspired learning. So this was definitely a highlight of the year seeing all of this come together.”