Renée Lucchesi. Welcome to the PCS Adventures Educator Spotlight Series. Today we're diving into the high seas adventure of Pirate Camp with Tara Andrews, community school coordinator at Harwood Elementary. Listen in as she shares how this hands-on program turns every learner into a confident crew member, building ships, exploring STEM and hunting for treasure along the way.
Tera Andrews. I'm Tera Andrews. I am the community school coordinator at Harwood Elementary in Rigby. I am not a teacher. My background is actually in a different field, but as the community school coordinator, I'm in charge of the services that we provide at Harwood Elementary that involve the community. It's basically community outreach, a little bit of social work.
Staci Mitzman. Perfect. Okay. So, you have used the Pirate Camp with these kids in your summer programming.
Tera Andrews. Yes.
Staci Mitzman. And out-of-school programming. So, before you started using Pirate Camp, what were some of the challenges in finding some of these hands-on learning experiences that would be easy to implement?
Tera Andrews. I think the challenge is trying to find something that the kids would be interested in, but also not being educationally relevant. Like, it's hard to find fun things that sometimes are not relevant to education. So that was a challenge.
Staci Mitzman. So, what did this program in particular help overcome, and how did it serve that purpose in bridging, I think, what you're saying is since you guys run the out-of-school programs, you don't want the kids to feel like they're still sitting in school? You want it to be a fun learning experience, but you also realize it can't be as structured as their day-to-day; they're already in school.
Tera Andrews. Yeah, we still wanted to have — we still want them to learn something. We try to avoid the summer slide. So, we use our summer program to still try to implement educational programs. And I feel like the PCS Edventures’ Camps have that curriculum, and the kids are hands-on learning, hands-on building, having fun and not really realizing that they're still learning, too.
Staci Mitzman. So, just walk me back to the moment where you opened up this box specifically for Pirate Camp. Okay, you see what's in there, the curriculum, all the materials. What was your first impression?
Tera Andrews. It was well organized in the box. It was a little overwhelming not really knowing what I was opening, I guess, but it walked me through really easily on how to set it up and how to organize the bricks and how to organize the sheets into the sheet protectors for the kids to use. And I've kept it exactly the same way in the box, and I feel like anyone can pick it up and spend, I don't know, 30 minutes acquainting themselves with it, and you feel confident to go ahead and use it. It's user friendly.
Staci Mitzman. How easy was it to get that first lesson up and running based on just opening it up and trying to get going?
Tera Andrews. Yep, it was very easy. It was very easy. I opened it up to day one. I liked that it showed exactly what bricks we needed that day, exactly what materials we were going to need for that day. And it was easy to pull it out and put it together, and very easy to present. The scripted program is great, very easy to present.
Staci Mitzman. What did the kids think about it? So, when you were doing those first activities with the kids, talk to me specifically about some of those Pirate Camp activities that you did with them and the things that they enjoyed, and maybe some of the things that they were saying, and those kind of those "aha" moments. What were they most excited about? Like, what was the vibe? How would you describe that?
Tera Andrews. They loved Pirate Camp. I've done it twice now, and both times the kids have been different age levels that we've used it, and they love it. They love being able to come in. We would organize the room in tables kind of separate from each other and said, "Okay, this is your ship, and this is, you know, people that you sit with are your crew". And so, we would go over the jobs of the ship, and they would design their flag, and they'd come up for a name, you know, come up with a name for their ship, and they loved it. And that kind of jump-started them into all of the other activities that came with it, like the buoyancy lesson and the catapult. And we put together with the maps a treasure hunt on our playground, and we drew a map of our playground and sent them on a treasure hunt, and they found a prize. We found some gold coins, chocolate gold coins that we put at the end, and they found their gold doubloons, and it was just fun. It was fun every day. It moved fast. It kept them engaged. I don't feel like any of them were ever bored. And they all took their jobs pretty seriously, too. Some of the jobs were unfamiliar to them, like "Bo'sun". That one took a little bit of—we had to explain, but the program explained what each job was, but we really didn't have any fighting even over who wanted to do what. Everybody kind of had their own little niche of how they wanted to participate, and so everybody found a job and loved it. The kids really liked it. It was fun.
Staci Mitzman. Did you notice a change in their confidence or excitement because of a program like this?
Tera Andrews. I think so. It had something to look forward to the next day. You know, like we did the catapults, and then we said, "Okay, and if we run out of time, then tomorrow we're going to go ahead and do our little competition with the catapults and who's going to do it the farthest". And so it gave them something to look forward to the next day. And everything we did was based around pirates, and they just knew what to expect, but yet there was a new adventure every day, but they still knew it was going to be pirate related. So, it was fun.
Staci Mitzman. Compared to piecing a curriculum together, kind of writing something up yourself, doing some research, finding all the supplies, even things as little as, you know, extra pencils and things like that, how much of a time saver is this? And what about the durability? You said you've already used it a couple times. Is this something that you will continue to use over and over?
Tera Andrews. Yes. Yes. I liked that everything was in there. I liked that right down to pencils was in the box. I liked having a theme, honestly, having that theme. Even if we had extra time, we could find something still within the pirate theme to pull, you know, as a time filler. I enjoyed having a focus and a theme to our class. I think that's helpful and it's time-saving and it's consistent for the kids and they know what to expect every day.
Staci Mitzman. Have you found any other creative ways to adapt it? You mentioned building your own treasure hunt around the playground. Anything else that was a fun way to kind of take what's in there, but then adapt it to just kind of your own environment and add a little splash of creativity to it?
Tera Andrews. We ended up starting every morning with pirate yoga. We found some pirate yoga videos. So, we would bring them in because we started the mornings with kind of a check-in and a little recess. And we found that it's best if we can get them in, kind of do a little five-minute, you know, brain break, calm down, get ready to get started. So, we would do pirate yoga, and then we would jump into the curriculum. And then if there was time filler, I guess, for instance, when we were doing the shanties, the sea shanties, we'd find videos of different sea shanties and play for them, and then they wrote their own, and it just made it really easy to find time filler things still based on what we were doing that day.
Staci Mitzman. Perfect. And what are some of the specific lifelong skills that the kids will take with them from this program? So, a few years from now, they may look back and be like, "Oh, I learned that doing Pirate Camp with Miss Andrews," or what do you think? What do you imagine, you know, years to come?
Tera Andrews. A compass and knowing direction: North, South, East, and West. A lot of them didn't know that. And pacing. They didn't know what pacing was. Now they know what pacing, you know, what does that mean: twelve paces east? We did teach them directions, like we went outside and showed them North, South, East, and West and how to tell. And so I think that was a huge one. I think working together as a team, you know, to build their ships or to do their group builds every day was valuable. I think learning just history of like the jobs, you know, "Bosun". They've never heard that word before. So, there was vocabulary in there that they'll take with them. I think the biggest thing, though, really, that direction, and they're learning how to read the compass and sundials. We did sundials one day just as an extra thing. And trying to think what else: buoyancy, you know, what will sink or what will float. There's a lot of science in it, which they don't get a ton of science in school anymore. So, I think that was great. Just that it's STEM based, I think was great.
Staci Mitzman. Excellent. Okay. Anything else you want to add about Pirate Camp before we switch gears?
Tera Andrews. My favorite. It's my favorite. I love it.
Staci Mitzman. Awesome. Yeah, I've heard that a lot from other educators. Yeah, people love it. Any other final thoughts of using this program?
Tera Andrews. No, I don't think so. I don't think so. I think you covered it.
Renée Lucchesi. Thanks for sailing along with us! Tera’s story shows how Pirate Camp charts a course for adventure, teamwork, and hands-on STEM discovery. To see her crew in action and uncover more treasure-filled educator stories, visit edventures.com/spotlight.
