November 2013
Luncheon Speakers Jefferson County Chamber of Commerce luncheon meetings are held at the Port Townsend Elks Lodge, 555 Otto St., at noon each Monday, federal holidays excluded. Everyone is welcome!
Nov. 4 – Dr. David Engle
The superintendent of the Port Townsend School District joins Jake Beattie, Executive Director of NW Maritime Center, to discuss an initiative to link K-12 learning to the community’s maritime culture. Sponsor Food Co-op
Nov. 11 Veterans Day No meeting.
Nov. 18 - Tim Lawson
The Executive Director or the Port Townsend School of Woodworking talks about the school’s evolution since its founding in 2008. Sponsor First Federal
Nov. 25 - Allyson Brooks Washington State’s Historic Preservation Officer from the Department of Archeology & Historic Preservation will talk about archaeological, cultural and historic preservation issues as well as the Main Street Program. Sponsor Skookum
NW Maritime Center, PT schools team to launch maritime studies Port Townsend Schools are embarking on an initiative to overhaul K-12 instruction by aligning student learning along a place-based strategy that strengthens the connection between classroom learning and the community of Port Townsend. Under the Maritime Discovery Schools initiative, teachers, administrators and local non-profit partners are beginning the work to retool curriculum throughout the district, with changes to be implemented beginning in the fall of 2014. “Very soon learning will look dramatically different here,” said Dr. David Engle, Superintendent of Port Townsend Schools. “Imagine learning in a school system where teachers and students weren’t constrained by outdated teaching models or the four walls of their classroom. Imagine what will happen when the rich experiences in this community are used for education.” From exploring the beach and the surrounding forests and streams, to experiences on and under the water, Engle said he believes that Port Townsend itself will become the medium for improving education, and improving education can have positive effects on the financial health of the entire community. CraFting the transForMation The basic idea of the Mari-
At its core, the maritime framework for Port Townsend schools is about connecting learning to the community. Here, students learn a variety of skills working on projects at the NW Maritime Center. time Discovery School initiative was the result of the outreach Engle embarked on when he arrived in 2012. The theme that came out of all those meetings with local businesses, gatherings in living rooms and classrooms and other public forums was that the community was ready to step up and help the school system make a positive change. Engle also saw that while
Port Townsend possessed an abundance of community resources, several demographic indicators depicted a community in trouble: increasing median age, rising levels of poverty, sub-par performance on standardized tests, and declining school enrollment all pointed to a community at risk. He felt that making the schools truly great would both improve the
readiness of the students who learn here and help address the root causes of those indicators. Improved education, he said, could be an economic driver by retaining families already here and attracting new families and companies to move here. This sea change in the schools was one of the reasons that Crawford Nautical School (the Continued on Page 2