New Bedford Whaling Museum

In February 2005, the New Bedford Oceanarium, in collaboration with the New Bedford Whaling Museum, will be opening the ECHO Resource Center. Hands-on experiment labs and Internet-based science activities about marine ecology, environmental studies and species identification are a few of the planned programs designed to appeal to upper elementary and middle school audiences. These programs will be free to underserved schools in the region.

For information contact Bob Rocha, Community Science Programs Manager, 508 997-0046, ext. 149.

New Bedford ECHO project sets sail

For many underserved youth in New Bedford the only way to learn about the rich maritime history in the city that once was among the most prosperous in the world is to read all about it in a social studies book. But now thanks to the creation of the New Bedford ECHO Project, these children can learn all about it from a unique source: aboard the state-owned sailing vessel Ernestina.

For the past few months thousands of students have set sail from their homeport of New Bedford for the very first time aboard the Ernestina and learned unforgettable lessons about sea life, the historic whale fishery, science, maritime history, and how New Bedford rose to the ranks of the wealthiest city in the world in the 19th century.

Students from New Bedford Global Learning Charter School and Friends
Academy work together to raise the foresail on Schooner Ernestina.

This experience and many other projects, would not have been possible without the help of a federal grant of $1,689,900 from the Department of Education to fund the New Bedford ECHO (Education Through Cultural and Historical Organizations) Project that comprises the New Bedford Whaling Museum, the education committee of the New Bedford Oceanarium, the Global Charter School, and UMass-Dartmouth.

“The opportunities afforded by the ECHO funding from the Department of Education have allowed the Museum to think broadly about the potential for collaboration with local partners, as well as those organizations and audiences identified by legislation in Alaska and Hawaii,” said Lee Heald, Ph.D., director of programs at the Museum. “In a short span of time we have developed new ways to provide local access to the Museum’s rich resources as well as ways to connect our collections with partners at a distance.”

Global Learning Charter School students enjoy their adventure
on the sea aboard the Ernestina.

In addition to the thousands of schoolchildren who called the Ernestina their classroom for a morning or afternoon this summer and early fall, the Museum also partnered with the vessel to be a subsidized lunch program site for the summer groups. In other ECHO activities:

Staff from the Inupiat Heritage Center in Barrow, Alaska, came to work in the Museum’s Research Library. While here, the Center’s curator discovered a photograph of her great-great-grandfather taken by a 19th-century photographer from New Bedford, which she hadn’t known existed.
Three Teacher Institutes – one held on the isolated Hawaiian Island of Molokai, another in the Arctic tundra in Barrow, Alaska, and the third on the streets of New Bedford – brought teachers from Alaska, Hawaii and Massachusetts together in all three locations. These teachers developed strategies for linking their students together through curricula and resources to build understanding of cultures across time and geography.
Photographic materials and logbooks in the Museum’s collection related to the Arctic region that have been scanned and catalogued will be connected to the Library of Congress’ “Meeting of Frontiers” website.
The Museum’s Education Classroom (located adjacent to the Jacobs Family Gallery) will be remodeled and refitted into a new, multi-media education resource center that benefits learners of all ages from around the world.
A partnership with UMass-Dartmouth is allowing the creation of a Connecting Oceans Academy that will involve 60 teachers in a yearlong professional development program.

Students from New Bedford Global Learning Charter School and Friends Academy
work together to raise the foresail on Schooner Ernestina.

ECHO funding has been approved for another year of activity. The Museum looks forward to continuing these broad-based programs that benefit so many of our school children. We also look forward to building our capacity to make stories of our rich collections widely available at home and abroad.