This schoolhouse rocks, mostly because it's floating on water.

The Spirit of Buffalo, a 73-foot-long topsail schooner that makes its home in the Erie Canal Harbor Commercial Slip, has been hosting disadvantaged local youth this summer.

"A lot of these students have never been on a boat," said Kate Mini, the founder of Buffalo Urban Outdoor Education. "These aren't experiences that are part of their day-to-day lives ... and yet it's economically disadvantaged kids who need exposure to that stuff."

The program also meets some state educational curriculum requirements in science and history for grades four through 12, an important feature that Mini said helps local teachers get clearance for school field trips on the boat.

Buffalo Urban Outdoor Education was first dreamed up in an August 2008 conversation between Mini and her fiance, Rich Hilliman. He asked her if she would be interested in helping out his family, which had just purchased the Spirit of Buffalo, build their new business.

Mini, who was working for Living Classrooms Foundation in Baltimore at the time, thought that it was the perfect opportunity to bring Living Classroom's style of experiential education to Buffalo, focusing on a subject with which she was well acquainted.

Mini, a U.S. Coast Guard-licensed captain, had her first boating experience when she was just three weeks old. Her father was formerly a member of the Navy, and the family found it much easier to take to the water than long car trips for their vacations.

"From Memorial Day to Labor Day, we were on the water all the time," Mini said. She estimated that, from childhood through her first years of college, she spent 50 to 60 days each year on the water, most nights sleeping on the family's boat.

On a hot day earlier this summer, breezes blowing in from the inner harbor buffeted a circle of 15 children, members of the Boys & Girls Club of Northern Chautauqua in Dunkirk.

"We're really excited to have you here today because you brought some awesome weather," Mini said to the children during the preboarding introductions. Before splitting students into groups, she asked if anyone had questions.

One hand rose up. "Are we going fishing?"

"Sort of," Mini replied.

That day, the students would be fishing with nets specially designed to catch plankton. Video microscopes on the Spirit of Buffalo help students learn to identify plankton while also learning a lesson about the micro-organism's place in the larger global food chain.

"The real heart of our mission is to broaden the horizons of Western New York's youth," Mini said.

A bivalve lesson, during which children open clam shells, teaches them aquatic biology and informs them about invasive species, such as zebra mussels. Observation containers found below deck house local fish species and provide an opportunity to talk about water quality and the indicators of water pollution.

Once the children stepped aboard, they were outfitted with blue and yellow work vests and sat patiently on the boat's wooden settee, waiting to take off to points unknown, or at least unknown to them.

Dante Ardillo, 9, of Fredonia, had been on boats a handful of times, but this was his first visit to Erie Canal Harbor to see the Spirit of Buffalo.

"It's old-fashioned," Ardillo said of the boat. The traditionally rigged Spirit of Buffalo is a replica schooner, reminiscent of those that used to enter the harbor and transport freight across the Great Lakes during the 19th century.

Nakedriana Brown, 8, of Dunkirk, was almost jittery in her excitement.

Moments later, children helped the crew release the lines tying the boat to the Commercial Slip. The Spirit of Buffalo began to glide past the USS Little Rock, taking the traveling science class toward the wide expanse of Lake Erie.

citydesk@buffnews.comnull