by Carol Markel

Bridge test – will it bear the weight? A model of the mid-Atlantic colonies (made by Ms. Joseph’s fifth grade)

hen artist Stephen Talasnik met me at Moishe’s Bakery, he asked if I had been in an elementary school lately. We were headed to Public School 110 in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge, to meet Diane Goldin and her fourth graders. “You can smell what’s for lunch,” he said. Stephen, who shows his art at Marlborough Gallery, received a New York State Foundation for the Arts Sculpture Fellowship. NYFA requires community service to receive the full grant, and Stephen chose to work with the Henry Street Settlement’s Abrons Arts Center, which sponsored his program.

Stephen’s idea was for students to build alternatives to the Williamsburg Bridge. He hoped they would learn not only why triangles give the most support to a structure, but also how a bridge can connect communities and families. “I really wanted this experience to be a five week love affair with the bridge,” said Stephen. To prepare the kids, he talked about the history of both the Williamsburg and Brooklyn Bridges. The class viewed David McCauley’s DVD, Building Big, and experienced the bridge first hand by walking across it. Stephen gave them homework (only somewhat facetiously): Go to Rome and see the stone bridges.

Dividing into teams, the class built their bridges out of brightly colored plastic straws. Most bridges had amenities only kids could come up with, likes pizza shops, a theme park, ATM machines (to get money for toys), and bathrooms. One boy even suggested putting “a school for Sundays” on the bridge, “just in case kids want to learn more things.”

Would the bridges be able to traverse a span and support weight without falling? Ms. Goldin hung a scissors by a paper clip to each bridge. Most bridges withstood the challenge – to a round of cheers by all.

Architecture Fills a Need

Enter Public School 20 on Essex Street, and you’ll be greeted by the safety officer sitting at a desk designed and built by the students. An early project in their Architecture and Community Studies Program, sponsored by the Abrons Arts Center, it’s a charming reminder of how practicality and imagination can merge in the hands of children. Howard Stern is the Teaching Architect who heads this twoyear program. He introduces architecture, tied in to curriculum in the fourth grade, and a school improvement project in the fifth grade. “We do something that the school needs,” says Howard.

Jeanette Rabbe’s fourth graders studied colonial America this spring. Howard invited me to see the cardboard models of fully furnished colonial houses they had made. Students were practicing their “presentations.” Joshua introduced his team and explained their house’s diminutive contents: A butter churn, handmade soap in a basket, and a spinning wheel for mom to make clothes.

The fifth grade school improvement project was to design capitals (decorative elements) for the top of columns in the lunchroom. Nasif Akanda, 10, who attends Sara Joseph’s class, opined, “Architecture is how you look at things. It gives us a new vocabulary to communicate unique observations.” Josuha Jimenez thought that a flower design was “adaptable for the capital project and very creative.”

P.S. 20 has a Young Architects Club – did your elementary school have one? “Education has changed,” explained Principal Felix Gil. “We know more now about how kids learn.”

I’ll say. Principal Gil took me to see the Block Museum. The architecture program had trickled down to extend block play to the lower grades. “Kindergarteners may not be able to explain symmetry, but they build a symmetric structure instinctually,” said Mr. Gil.