Radcliffe Creek School relaunches wooden boatbuilding program

Boatbuilders Joe Smith and John Henderson pose with students in Radcliffe Creek School’s boat building program behind the wooden skiff they constructed.
From left to right: Anya Orr ’27, Grady Glenn ’27, Morgan Joiner ’27, Volunteer Joe Smith, Luke Winger ’27, Greyson House ’25, Volunteer Tom Smith, Finn Thompson ’27, Ryland Kay ’26, Volunteer John Henderson and Lemar Lowrance ‘26

Radcliffe Creek School’s (RCS) makerspace has been brought back to life, along with the School’s longtime tradition of teaching its students the art of wooden boatbuilding, thanks to grant support from area foundations. The space, which sat empty for years following challenges from the pandemic, is once again abuzz with the sounds of saws and sanders as community boatbuilders teach woodworking skills to RCS students, leading them through the process of building a wooden skiff.

RCS Student Morgan Joiner ’27 attaches the foredeck to the deck beam under the direction of Boatbuilders Joe Smith and John Henderson
(From left to right: Finn Thompson ’27, Volunteer Joe Smith, Volunteer John Henderson, Morgan Joiner ’27, Anya Orr ’27 and Greyson House ’25)

A grant from the Samuel and Margaret Gorn Foundation, dedicating a new STEM Workshop within the space, as well as funding from the Dock Street Foundation to support the boatbuilding program, has made it possible for Radcliffe Creek to begin offering a new course, “STEM to Stern: Boatbuilding 101” to a group of sixth, seventh and eighth graders during a weekly after-school program. Two community volunteers—Joe Smith and John Henderson—are bringing decades of wooden boatbuilding experience, along with a passion for teaching STEM concepts, such as physics and arithmetic, to their teaching role.

Boatbuilder John Henderson explained, “As an educational experience or a lifetime fascination, wooden boatbuilding combines learning about the properties of wood, gaining facility with tools, and applying math and science to understand and predict performance. Along the way, we acquire an appreciation for accuracy, the perseverance to work through the details, and the ability to overcome inevitable frustrations.”

Using a boat design from the Alexandria Seaport Foundation, students are cutting pieces from wood and assembling them, along with materials from Chesapeake Light Craft, as they learn to build, paint and finish a twelve-foot wooden skiff. The project is expected to last three months. Boatbuilder Joe Smith remarked, “By the time the boat is finished, students will have visited a lumber mill to see how trees become boards, cut wood to dimensions shown on drawings, drilled pilot holes for the screws that hold the boat together, spread epoxy adhesive to make the boat strong and watertight, painted the whole boat and added varnished seats and rub rails to make the boat beautiful. Students have already learned to use both hand tools and power tools, and they are ready to take on their own projects.”

After the boat is completed in the spring, the School plans to name and christen the boat before ceremoniously launching it into the water with the students who built it. In the near future, RCS plans to auction off the finished vessel to fund additional projects in the revitalized space. Head of School Peter Thayer added, “We are grateful to the Samuel and Margaret Gorn Foundation and the Dock Street Foundation for making this project possible. Hands-on, immersive programs like this one bring math and engineering concepts to life in a practical way that makes learning exciting for students.”

To learn more about the immersive, individualized education program offered at Radcliffe Creek School, visit www.radcliffecreekschool.org or call 410-778-8150.