« Back to Blog

It’s Education Week at Patriots Point!

Brooke Griffin Aug 26, 2019

It’s back to school week across the country which means it’s the start of a new educational year here at Patriots Point! Our goal is to be in the classrooms as much as possible so when kids come aboard they are excited and willing to learn.

Here at Patriot’s Point Naval and Maritime Museum, we strive to be not only a fun place to visit but an educational one as well. For the past five years, we have worked with the South Carolina Department of Education, with the current school year being no exception. Since, 2014, more than 40,000 fifth-grade students have come aboard the USS Yorktown to exeperience our science and history programs. Some 12,000 more students will step aboard the ship during the 19-20 school year.

On these field trips, the students climb aboard a B-25 Mitchell Bomber plane to learn about the Doolittle Raid, participate in our Flight Academy, explore the history of the ship, and so much more. Those are just a few examples of the hands-on learning the kids get while they’re here, but the learning actually begins in their classrooms before they ever step foot on the ship.

Patriots Point self-publishes more than 130,000 storybooks and distributes them as a science and history set to every fifth-grade student throughout the entire state public school system. The books were written by educators here at Patriots Point to create a well-rounded learning experience by supplementing lesson plans used by teachers and linking them to the experiences the kids will have when they go on their free field trip to Patriots Point.

Of course, everything in 2019 is technology-aided and this educational program follows that trend. In our storybook sets, there are “lightnings” on many of the pages that the student can “zap” with a smart device app that pairs with the book. Through this, the student is delivered a short video with extra in-depth information on the topic they’re reading about. This augmented reality experience grips the student while they’re in the classroom so that when they get to the ship they can really dive in with the knowledge.

Also brand new for the 2020 school year, students will learn about the Panama Canal and how the lock system works. A grant from the South Carolina Ports Authority provided funding for the creation of working models that can elevate or lower a small radio-controlled aircraft carrier to different heights. Did you know the USS Yorktown navigated the Panama Canal in July of 1943? It was an extremely tight squeeze!

While the educational experience these fifth graders are getting is impressive (in our humble opinion!) there is still more offered here on the ship.

Since 2016, the Patriots Point Education Department has also offered an annual two-day overnight conference aboard the USS Yorktown where teachers earn 20 credits towards their recertification. Hundreds of teachers have taken advantage of this opportunity just in the past few years.

“It’s incredible to see how far we’ve come in the past five years, and what we’ve built to support the fifth-grade curriculum across the state,” said Patriots Point Education Director Keith Grybowski. “When students visit Patriots Point they are challenged to put the skills they’ve learned to work.”

We are thrilled to be a part of hundreds of classrooms every year to help further the upcoming generation in a way the kids will remember for the rest of their lives. We can’t wait to see this year’s students discover science and history aboard the ships and in their storybooks!