NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) – In a classroom of New Orleans kids, homework sounds like a tall assignment.

WGNO Good Morning New Orleans features reporter Bill Wood wants to know, “just how tall is tall?”

Austin Kuhn, a 15-year-old, ninth grader says, “it’s like 100 feet, twenty of me stacked on each other’s shoulders.”

Bill Wood says, “that’s a lot of you.”

Austin Kuhn says, “yea, I don’t think I could handle that much of me.”

From the New Orleans Military and Maritime Academy, NOMMA, twenty students left Louisiana to set sail.

They traveled from Mobile, Alabama to Pensacola, Florida.

For one week, their school floated across the Gulf of Mexico.

Aboard one of America’s Tall Ships.

Josiyah Charles, a 16-year-old tenth grader says, “the experience was nice, got out of the classroom for a change, do something different.”

Since the seventies, kids across America have learned the ropes of life by taking a trip on a Tall Ship.

Cruising with confidence and courage from a fantastic voyage of a vacation, but not exactly spring break on the beach.

Bill Wood notices, “some of you bundled up, what was the weather like out there?”

Fifteen-year-old Maggie-Claire Watson, another tenth grader says, “it was rainy and the boat listed side to side, we had to wear these harnesses to clip on.”

Bill Wood asks, “how cold was it?”

Maggie-Claire Watson says, “it was freezing, you had to wear blankets and jackets.”

Bill Wood asks, “did you just want to come home?”

Maggie-Claire says, “we just wanted to get warm.”

Louisiana teenagers are learning to be leaders.

Getting a lesson in bravery, strength, and grace.

At the wheel, headed home with a really tall tale to tell.