What are the biggest waves you’ve ever seen? Have you ever saved a life? What is the horsepower of a helicopter? 

These are just a few of the questions asked by Grade 6 students during the Adopt a Ship pilot program. Created by the Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) in partnership with Canadian Geographic Education, the program brought together classrooms with crews on board CCG vessels to create interactive learning experiences for elementary school students.

“We really wanted to give them a taste of what a career with the Coast Guard could be like,” says Cathy Salter, director for operational personnel and force generation for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada. “We wanted them to learn more about marine safety, the environment, the importance that shipping has to the economy — all sorts of things that people don’t generally think about, although we’re a marine nation.”

The Adopt a Ship pilot program, which ran from February to March, assigned CCG vessels to two classrooms. Students tracked “their” vessels and communicated directly with the crew over the course of the two months. The John P. Tully, an offshore oceanographic science vessel that operates on the B.C. coast, was paired with an English-speaking class from Victoria, B.C., while the Martha L. Black, a ship that patrols the St. Lawrence Seaway, worked with a French-speaking class from Drummond, N.B.

“The project really showed them another type of career. We’re in a rural place where it’s mostly agriculture and forestry and this was an opportunity for my students to see careers that related to water and navigation,” says Daniel Martin, the New Brunswick teacher from École Mgr-Lang. “I believe that we need to teach our kids to have an open mind to everything that’s in the world. If they don’t get the opportunity to see what’s out there, they won’t think about going outside their community.”

In the past, the Coast Guard has done outreach aimed at secondary school students. However, by that age, it’s too late for many students to gain the necessary requirements to get into the Coast Guard College or similar programs around the country because they are missing key math or science credits. More recently, the Coast Guard has shifted their focus to work with younger kids.

“One of the things that we found is when kids are thinking about what they want to do with their lives, they don’t know that there are good jobs available in the marine industry or what those jobs are, so they don’t think about what sorts of things they need to take in school,” explains Salter.

In the Adopt a Ship program, students sent weekly questions to their vessel’s crew and completed activities in a log book on themes such as maritime safety and navigation. The range of topics covered over the course of the program not only provided insight into what the Coast Guard does, but also connected to what teachers would be expected to cover in their province’s curriculum.

The geography connections, such as environmental protection and border patrol, are obvious, but teachers found other unique ways to integrate what their students were learning. Martin taught his students new vocabulary in French class, while in math class they calculated their vessel’s fuel consumption and compared it to what an average car would use in a week.

Sean Pollitt, the participating B.C. teacher from Colquitz Middle School, had his students use an online marine traffic system to track their ship each week. They used Google Maps to map out different Indigenous groups in British Columbia and talked about how their local firsthand knowledge supports the work of the Coast Guard. Students also learned about the role of the Coast Guard in an international context by looking at the impact of global shipping routes on trade.

“One of the activities was to map where your lunch came from — having the kids look at different sea routes, understanding the role of the Suez or Panama Canal in bringing goods and supplies around the world, was something new to them,” says Pollitt. “Using technology to connect them to those understandings was a powerful way to cement that learning.”

However, the highlight of the program wasn’t the hands-on activities or interactive tools — it was the chance to speak directly with people working in the Coast Guard. Both classrooms had several virtual hangouts, which included sessions with the Canadian Coast Guard College, the Port of Victoria Regional Operations Centre and Coast Guard personnel working in the field. Martin’s class had the opportunity to talk with captain Stéphane Julien of the Martha L. Black.