Story and Photos by Elika Coff ’30
Engaging, riveting, and most of all, fun. These words only scrape the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Building our Bridges. Building our Bridges (taught by Mr. Kevin Frankenberger, MS Math Teacher) encourages its talented students to use their problem-solving skills and quick thinking to build a toothpick that can withstand 35lbs (this is just their goal)! The students learn teamwork skills as well as architectural skills when working with their teams to complete the challenge. Students learned with videos and interactive experiences in this course. The bridges they created are built with many different skills they have learned and, of course, with much creativity. The challenge was just the beginning of what these students accomplished in this course.
The students started by sketching out their designs on a template and then started to develop more unique designs. The teams worked with toothpicks and hot glue to create a bridge for the challenge at the end of the class. Students worked through any problem they came across with minimal to no help from Mr. Frankenberger. These young and brilliant minds are learning to solve problems and communicate with each other to work through challenges that come up along the way when building and testing the bridges. When asked how the skills they are learning would help them in the future, the students had great answers. “It will help me because I want to be an engineer and I’m learning how to make things,” said Feigo Yin ’31. Eloise Danforth ‘30 agreed. She said “It helps you see things in a different perspective.”
These students are not just learning, but also making new connections and friends. Students are branching out to communicate with other students that would not be their go-to people to make friends. These experiences are the ones that help grow our community and make us stronger.
Building our Bridges is an amazing course that encourages students to reach a little bit out of their comfort zone and challenge themselves. Students are really embracing our middle school morals and principles of LEAD (learning with curiosity and joy, embracing challenge, advocating for self and others, and demonstrating teamwork) throughout the entirety of this wonderful course. We can’t wait to see which bridge wins! Good luck, Rams!