Work Based Learning

New York Harbor School students have amazing opportunities. In this school, we do things called Work-Based Learning activities which means that we go out to work sites and learn what they do from a first-person perspective. This is a good way for us to learn about the thing that we’d be doing if we ended up pursuing a professional career related to the maritime career.

This summer I had ended up doing an internship for World Yacht. I ended up working on their lobster boat World Yacht Destiny and was a deckhand for a while before I started working on the dock. While there I had learned a lot while working in a maritime career. I learned that being in the New York Harbor School is preparing us for what we do in our future. This school is setting us up for greatness and it’s helping us learn for our next steps whether it be going to college or working right out of high school. While working at World Yacht, it showed me how much the Vessel Operations program did to set me up to not only be able to process the new things and work on what I already knew, but it also helped me get my name out there and impress people with the things I was showing them. Also even getting the name of the New York Harbor School out there in general. Some things that we got to experience was that the way things happened in school did help us in the long run when it came to working on boats. Also like how we learned how to tie knots and how to maintain a boat and make sure we dock safely and be able to communicate with other people it just helped us all entirely when trying to go into the next level of the maritime industry, and for us just being high school students this makes us feel like we’re really special to other people. For example, when it came to maintaining the boats we had to do things like engine checks, cleaning the boat and making sure that everything was organized and was made easy to be found when needed.

It was very different from doing things in school because while in school we always had to tie a figure eight to a cleat but when it came time to doing stuff on the World Yacht boat we had pre-made lines and it was more difficult to dock depending on how the weather was. But this also helped us learn in school to always be ready for things to change fast, whether or not it was planned. Talking about the school was great, it made people look into it and it made me keep my head up and always be on task because people always had high expectations of me. As a class when we go on Work-Based Learning trips, it shows how much we’ve grown since our sophomore year to now. We get to reflect on that because it shows how much we’ve learned and it shows how much we put into being able to actually learn and not just seeing something and giving up because it might be too hard. Like how when I was working during the summer in the internship with World Yacht there were rough times like when we were in a storm with nothing to do but communicate with other vessels and make sure we were in a good spot. Things like this you don’t just learn when you’re in school you learn with time and experience. This was something that prepared me to know that anything can happen at any given time because nothing is ever gonna be fully safe unless you maintain composure and know that you’re doing your best to keep everyone safe.With this we learn that everyone can do this, it is not that hard and everyone has a chance to be great. This is what this school has taught me. Never to give up no matter how hard it is and Vessel Operations showed me that with a group working all together you could always accomplish anything no matter how hard the task.

Work-Based Learning tours are very beneficial because it really shows us things that we may have not even seen our first times in a job. These tours also help us get our name out there and it helps with networking too. For example, when it comes to networking I feel like just being out while I was working there was getting my name to different places especially since I was meeting new people. Also, like how when I was working there people were asking about me and the school that I went to and I ended up exchanging numbers with people and also gave out my social media which helped me get in contact with many others that are interested in the same thing that I’m into.I’m glad as a student and speaking for our class I’m sure everyone is glad that we’ve had the opportunity to be able to do this. This is not something that everyone in high school does and it’s not something we should take for granted. This is helping us now and for the things that we wanna do for the rest of our lives. Even if you don’t want to pursue a career in the maritime industry it’s always good to know in your life because being able to broaden your range in the job industry is never a bad thing. Becoming a mariner is not just a job. It’s a way of life and not only is it a way of life but it brings all lives together. When you’re in the waters you always feel like a family. When it comes from the people that you work with to the people that you see on the other boats when you pass by them. This is because everyone is always connected one way or another. Being able to have this opportunity is something amazing and I never thought that I’d be in this position if you asked me a couple of years ago. This changed my whole perspective of life because now I feel like I can figure out what my purpose is right now. I feel like I’m doing something beneficial for others and I feel like I’m growing not only as a student but as a person too. I’m grateful for how everything has been happening even if sometimes it was hard. But you never learn from being right all the time. It’s from making a mistake and always getting back up. And that’s what this taught me, that when you make a mistake you can get back up and just learn from there and get better.

~Christian Pagan