Sean the Harbor Educator

(I'm on the left)

Hello. My name is Sean Keane and this will be my first summer working for Save the Harbor/ Save the Bay as a Senior Harbor Educator. In 2014, I graduated from UMass Amherst and began my career in education as an ESL Teacher for adults at various non-profit organizations around the city. I truly enjoy my job and find it a rewarding and worthwhile way to spend my time. There's nothing I'd rather do this summer than to continue to help and educate people, especially for an organization as important as Save the Harbor/ Save the Bay and a cause as special as the Youth Program.

I grew up in Wilmington, which is a few miles north of Boston. Although my town is landlocked and has no beaches, I was still lucky enough to spend a lot of my childhood around the ocean, mostly on Cape Cod where my grandmother lives, in a little inlet in Pocasset Harbor. I spent my summers as a youth searching for crabs and other creatures in those mucky waters, and fishing off of kayaks and local docks. I still love putting on a pair of goggles and exploring the seafloor, and I still feel the same excitement that I felt as a child when I discover something strange or new. 

Mr. Coffin speaking to us on our way to George's Island.

Last week, I met the entire Save the Harbor staff at orientation. Naturally, at first, most of us were shy and quiet. It can be frightening to be in a room full of strangers. That attitude quickly changed once we began the activities that our supervisors had planned for us. On Wednesday we all took the ferry over to George's Island. It was my first time going to a Boston Harbor Island, and I learned a number of interesting facts about the Harbor, the islands, and the city itself. I always knew that some of Boston was man-made land, but our leader Mr. Coffin made it abundantly clear that the majority of Boston is man made, and he showed us which parts of the city were constructed and how the projects were completed. We also saw the huge sewage cleaning bubbles on Deer Island at the city's treatment plant, which Save the Harbor helped to implement. I'm happy to be associated with an organization that is doing such essential work for the city and for future generations of Bostonians and I'm eager to share this excitement with our young learners this summer.
-SEAN

The staff on George's Island