Northfield Bank Foundation
Supports Career Awareness in the Local Maritime Industry
Student art work
Throughout the spring of 2022 the Noble Maritime Collection partnered with St. Teresa-St. Rita STREAM Academy, PS 44, and PS 59 with the goal of introducing third through eighth-graders to the local maritime industry. We are grateful to Northfield Bank Foundation for the opportunity to meet the students in their classrooms and to welcome them to the museum to teach them about careers on the water and on the shore.
Music historian and teaching artist, Bob Wright, sings sea shanties with PS 59 students.
The museum’s Director of Programs Dawn Daniels commenced the program by distributing the museum’s workbook, Maritime Careers of New York Harbor, to participating students. During sessions one through four, Ms. Daniels and Teaching Artist/Musician Bob Wright visited the students in their classrooms at school or online through Google Classroom. Each class studied the workbooks by reading sections, discussing photographs, and talking about their future career goals. They explored ways to apply job ideas that they already had in mind, such as mechanic, computer technician, and construction worker, to opportunities available in the local maritime industry. They learned about training resources such as the Sea Scouts, Council on Port Performance, Urban Assembly High Schools, and apprenticeship programs that help steer students towards trades that are plentiful on Staten Island’s waterfront.
The program included visual and performing arts education. After the sessions about the maritime industry were complete, Ms. Daniels led art projects, such as printmaking and pop-up card making, which depicted scenes of New York Harbor. Subsequently, Mr. Wright taught songs about working at sea, and the students sang along with the shanties. In addition to being a musician and retired teacher, he was a commercial diver. He performed for the students with his guitar and banjo, teaching them stories about notable events and people in New York Harbor’s history, and answering questions about working underwater surrounded by sharks and jellyfish.
St. Teresa-St. Rita STREAM Academy students participating in a virtual Lesson with Director of Programs, Dawn Daniels
Students visiting Atlantic Salt, Co.
Some of the classes were able to visit the Atlantic Salt Company shipyard, an importer of road salt, on the waterfront overlooking New York Harbor. The terminal manager, Brian DeForest, gave the students a tour of the facilities, explained the different jobs that workers do there, and staged a face-off between front-end loader and excavator vehicles. The trip had a profound impact on the students, with many expressing interest in future maritime careers.
The residency partnership was made possible, in part, by a generous grant from Northfield Bank Foundation.
