Volunteer Training Sessions Scheduled for Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum

     St. Michaels, Md. -- The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum is offering training for new and existing volunteers throughout September, with eight sessions focused on four programs. Interested participants need to pre-register for the training, and can choose to attend one or all of the sessions. Once training is complete, participants are asked to commit to a weekly shift or more of volunteer work.
     “Bay Bounty” tour training will be offered September 6 and 8 from 10am to 12noon at the museum’s Van Lennep Auditorium. Volunteers will learn how to guide participants of all ages through this environmental and cultural history program that “follows the water” in every season on the Chesapeake, starting with Native Americans and continuing through today's watermen. Volunteers will learn stories and hands-on demonstrations, and familiarize themselves with the authentic objects and boats depicting how residents of the Chesapeake have made their livelihoods, shaped their environment, and responded to the animals and waterways that make bay life unique.
     “Bay Discovery” tour training will be offered September 13 and 15 from 1 to 3pm at the museum’s Van Lennep Auditorium. Volunteers will learn how to lead tours of all ages that explores the Chesapeake’s history from the woodland forests and marshes of the Native Americans to the skipjacks and lighthouses of the 19th century. Volunteers will learn the stories of the bay's transition from work place to play space, and become familiar with the museum’s touch objects, the interactive displays of the Hooper Strait Lighthouse, At Play on the Bay and Bay History exhibits. They will also learn the roles of the museum’s floating fleet of historic boats in history along the bay.
     “Crab Cakes” program training will be offered from 1 to 3pm on September 21 and 22 along the museum’s 18-acre waterfront campus. Volunteers will learn how to engage 3rd through 8th grade students in learning about Chesapeake geography, social studies, and economics by following the blue crab on its journey from the brackish bay to the picnic table. Volunteers will learn about the people who earn their livelihood from the crabbing industry, and how to involve students in trotlining, crab-picking, culling, and how it might feel ordering from a restaurant on a migrant worker’s wages.
     “Oystering on the Chesapeake” program training takes place September 28 and 29 from 1 to 3pm in the museum’s Van Lennep Auditorium. Volunteers will learn how to engage students in grades 3 through 8 in this hands-on program that explores the history of the ‘greatest oyster factory on Earth’—the Chesapeake Bay, and how the oyster shaped the culture, industry, and environment of the bay and its people. Volunteers will be trained on how to lead student learning around an historical bay where oysters laid ‘thick as stones’ through maps, activities, and giant oyster shells. Participants will learn of the Oyster Wars and an ‘oyster gold rush,’ and how to conduct close-up investigations on an oyster nurseries’ crabs, fish, and baby mollusks.
     To register for any of these volunteer training sessions or for more information, contact CBMM’s Director of Events and Volunteer Program Melissa Spielman at 410-745-4956 or mspielman@cbmm.org.