Maritime | 253: Project-Based Learning at Port Scale 

By: Deepti Reim

The world of work is changing rapidly, requiring workers who can navigate evolving technologies, collaborate across disciplines, and adapt to increasingly complex operational systems. K-12 systems around the country are constantly trying to evolve alongside these changes, transforming Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs to better prepare students for life beyond the diploma. But while many programs attempt to simulate industry experiences inside a traditional classroom setting, the Maritime | 253 Skills Center is taking a different approach by embedding students directly within one of the Pacific Northwest’s largest economic ecosystems. 

Here in the South Puget Sound region, the Maritime | 253 Skills Center is rising from the Port of Tacoma tideflats with a unique plan to address local workforce development needs when it opens its doors this fall: prepare students for local maritime careers through a learning model built around project-based, industry-embedded experiences. Just steps from active port operations, students will learn in an environment designed to mirror the pace, complexity, and collaboration of the maritime industry itself. The result is a model that reimagines what secondary career preparation can look like when industry, community, and instruction are intentionally designed together. 

The Maritime | 253 Model: Redefining CTE 

The Washington State Skills Center Association defines a skills center as a regional hub with specialized instructors and facilities that support academic and skill development to prepare students to successfully enter the job market or advanced education and training. Students spend part of the day at the skills center engaged in immersive, hands-on learning while still enrolled in core classes at their home high school. 

“Ports are major workforce hubs hidden in plain sight,” shares Kristie Wolford, Director of the Maritime | 253 Skills Center. “One of the biggest gaps we saw was that, despite being in a major maritime region, our students had almost no access to maritime careers while they were still in high school. Traditional CTE programs are often limited by space, equipment, and time— they are typically single classes inside a high school building. That makes it hard to replicate complex, real-world industries like maritime.” 

Maritime | 253 is taking a place-based approach, centering its learning experiences in its physical location and surrounding workforce needs. The new facility is located on port-owned property right next to the new headquarters for the Port of Tacoma on the Thea Foss waterway, the historic site of a Puyallup Tribal village. Here, students from districts across the region have a home base to engage with industry partners in and around the port, enrolling in one of four career pathways embedded in the region: Advanced Maritime Manufacturing, Port Operations & Logistics, Maritime Technology, and Sustainability. By leveraging the Port of Tacoma as a living classroom, students will have opportunities to explore concepts and skills tied to industry and their local community.  

“From the beginning, this has been a co-designed effort alongside industry, labor, and community partners,” shares Wolford. “That collaboration continues through intentional structures. We have advisory systems in place, including a General Advisory Council made up of employers, labor representatives, and postsecondary partners. We also hold regular roundtables and use feedback loops—surveys, conversations, and direct engagement—to keep refining our programs. The goal is to make industry a constant presence, not a one-time contributor. We want our programs to evolve as the industry evolves, and that only happens if those voices stay actively involved.” 

Within their pathway, students will progress towards graduation while earning dual credit, industry-recognized certifications, and work-ready skills to prepare them for whatever path they plan to take after graduation, whether that includes direct entry to workforce, apprenticeship/trade school, community college, and/or undergraduate and postgraduate studies. “Students spend half their day with us, which gives them over a thousand hours of hands-on, specialized training,” says Wolford. “That level of depth, combined with industry credentials, dual credit, and direct exposure to employers, allows us to move beyond ‘career exploration’ and into direct workforce preparation.” 

With port officials working just steps away, students will have the unique opportunity to interact with industry partners at every step of the project path, from curriculum design to equipment to critique and assessment. Teachers will set norms and expectations aligned with experiential work-based learning, including professional communication, collaboration, safety, accountability, and problem solving. Participating industry partners will build pipelines for regional workforce demand and directly support the training of their future employees. These structural decisions are also intentionally designed to support Gold Standard Project-Based Learning (PBL) at every level of the student experience. 

Gold Standard PBL as the Instructional Backbone 

In its building design, pathway structures, industry integration, and instructional practices, Maritime | 253 is intentionally designed to operationalize Gold Standard PBL across the curriculum. Teachers will receive PBL professional development before the school year opens and engage in project-based instructional support throughout the school year. As students engage in learning through their projects, they will also work toward proficiency in the Maritime | 253 Learner Competencies: Solution Design, Collaboration, Grit, Communication, Leadership, and Empathy. 

1. Challenging Problem or Question 

One of the greatest advantages of being co-located with a major international port is that students will engage with emergent problems and opportunities identified in partnership with industry. From simulating vessel scheduling disruptions to monitoring water quality in the Puyallup River, the Port of Tacoma provides an abundance of authentic challenges for students to solve in collaboration with professionals. The building layout supports high-quality PBL—large, flexible spaces for collaboration, dedicated areas for building and testing, and environments where students can move from planning to production seamlessly, including outdoor and waterfront access. 

2. Sustained Inquiry 

In the Maritime | 253 Skills Center, students enroll in classes for half of the school day focused on their pathway of choice, prioritizing content depth over task completion with over a thousand hours of hands-on, specialized training. These large blocks of time are designed to support extended projects with multiple phases that mirror industry workflows and allow for deeper inquiry. 

As one example, students in the Advanced Maritime Manufacturing pathway will engage in integrate projects combining welding, 3D design, and mechatronics, learning to both weld themselves and work alongside a robot performing a weld. As students build technical skills and content knowledge, they will practice solution design and learn to manage evolving project conditions.  

3. Authenticity 

The Maritime | 253 learning environments, projects, and expectations all mirror that of their respective industries. As they engage in their project work developed by teachers who have worked in the industries related to their pathway, students will be expected to work with industry-informed constraints, timelines, and standards. “In our model, authenticity means proximity, relevance, and contribution,” says Wolford. “Students are part of something bigger than school. They’re not learning about port operations from a textbook; they’re learning in the middle of an active maritime ecosystem.” 

For example, one of the technology pathway labs is designed as an industry-standard cybersecurity “clean room” where students practice responding to malware attacks. Two simulator labs for crane operations and vessel operations provide a training ground for students to navigate real-time conditions. The instructional model is intended to encourage independence, grit, and professional accountability as students complete increasingly complex tasks. 

4. Student Voice & Choice 

Student personalization is embedded within every level of the Maritime | 253 design. As a macro-level choice, students enroll in the pathway of interest, with the opportunity to specialize and participate in interdisciplinary project work with other pathways. Projects are designed to give students meaningful leadership and decision-making responsibilities throughout each phase, with workplace-aligned roles, responsibility for project management, and voice and choice in their solutions.  

5. Reflection 

Throughout their pathway learning experiences, students will participate in structured reflection on pathway-specific technical skills, industry competencies, and safety knowledge, along with school-wide learner competencies. This process is intended to support continuous growth in the skills and habits of mind needed for success in their chosen career pathway.  

“Our goal is that our students learn how to collaborate, communicate, and problem-solve in ways that mirror the workplace,” states Wolford. “Over time, that shifts their mindset. They begin to show up with confidence, ownership, and a sense of purpose.” 

6. Critique & Revision 

Curriculum and project work at Maritime | 253 will incorporate critique and revision from the outset. Teachers will participate in project pitch panels with industry partners to receive feedback on their planned projects and learning experiences for students. The instructional model includes regular feedback sessions with instructors and industry partners as they develop their project work, aligning with industry standards along with an emphasis on high-quality work, precision, and professional accountability.  

7. Public Product 

Public presentation and community visibility are embedded into the Maritime | 253 model, with a facility designed as both a school and community space. Students will present their work to industry stakeholders in demonstrations, exhibitions, or applied project deliverables to partners in and around the Port of Tacoma, with the goal of creating products or prototypes that have relevance beyond the classroom. The learning environment is designed to normalize public critique and iterative feedback, with student work regularly visible to peers, instructors, and industry partners. This will help students develop content expertise alongside empathy for learners at different levels of mastery. 

“The goal is for each of our students to have at least one industry mentor during their time at the Skills Center,” says Wolford. “For us, success looks like a student completing their coursework with a fully informed decision of where they’re going, surrounded by a network that will make that dream happen.” 

Outcomes and Implications for Other Models 

While Maritime | 253 reflects the unique assets of the South Puget Sound region, several design principles may be transferable to other schools and systems.  

Industry Alignment 

“To replicate something like Maritime | 253, you need alignment across systems: education, industry, community, and policy,” states Wolford. “And you need a willingness to rethink what school can look like.” Schools seeking to replicate aspects of the model may benefit from examining their own regional workforce needs, geographic assets, and opportunities for sustained industry partnership. Engaging with industry and community partners on an ongoing basis helps bring workplace-aligned significance into the classroom along with meaningful, ongoing career exposure and immersion.  

Postsecondary Access 

Maritime | 253 also challenges traditional assumptions about postsecondary preparation in CTE. Rather than positioning students toward a single destination, the model is designed to support multiple pathways after graduation. “We talk a lot about helping each student move from their identity as student to emerging professional,” says Wolford. “When they consistently work on real problems, using industry tools, and present their work to industry partners, they start to see themselves differently. We hope to see significant growth in how our students carry themselves, how they talk about their work, and how they plan for their future.” 

Dual credit opportunities, industry-recognized certifications, and work-based learning experiences are embedded throughout the student experience to expand access and help students make more informed decisions about their future careers. 

The model also raises broader questions for schools and systems about how career pathways are communicated to students. Equitable access to advising, advanced coursework, industry credentials, and exposure to a wide range of professions may play a significant role in helping students make informed postsecondary choices aligned to their interests and goals. 

Creating Intentional Space for PBL 

“I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that you can replicate this model by just adding a few industry partnerships or calling a project real-world,” shares Wolford. “True place-based, industry-connected learning requires a much deeper shift. It’s about changing the environment, the schedule, the instructional model, and the relationships. It requires sustained partnerships, not one-off experiences. It also requires investing in educators—especially those coming from industry—so they can facilitate high-quality project-based learning effectively.” 
 
The Maritime | 253 model suggests that high-quality PBL depends as much on organizational structures as instructional strategy. Extended blocks of learning time support deeper inquiry and more complex project work, while specialized learning environments create opportunities for students to engage in workplace-aligned tasks using industry tools, standards, and project processes. Rather than treating PBL as an isolated classroom strategy, the model embeds project-based learning into the broader design of the school itself.  

Conclusion 

The future of CTE is moving toward a blend of Gold-Standard PBL anchored in industry ecosystems with professionally aligned learning environments. Maritime |253 represents this shift by redesigning school to function more like meaningful participation in community and industry. In doing so, the model challenges educators to rethink whether career preparation should happen after school— or whether school itself can become the first stage of meaningful professional participation. 

“Authentic learning isn’t something we try to simulate— our goal is to create conditions where students experience it consistently through their daily work,” shares Wolford. “For students, that means their work will feel real because it is real. They will be solving problems that mirror what’s happening just outside the classroom. For instructors, it means teaching is constantly connected to current industry practices. And for our partners, it’s a true collaboration where they’re helping shape the next generation of their workforce.”  

Deepti Reim is a Career and Technical Education (CTE) teacher on special assignment with Tacoma Public Schools, where she supports educators in designing engaging, industry-connected learning experiences that prepare students for an evolving world of work. A longtime advocate for Project-Based Learning (PBL), Deepti has spent over a decade helping students and teachers engage in meaningful learning that extends beyond the classroom walls. As a member of the PBLWorks National Faculty, she facilitates professional learning experiences that support schools across the country in implementing Gold Standard PBL and building cultures of deeper learning. She is particularly interested in the intersection of CTE, PBL, and workforce development as a means of expanding opportunity and student agency. Deepti holds a B.A. in Global Studies and French from UCLA and an M.A. in Curriculum and Instruction from CSU Sacramento.