Bridges and the City.

An Interdisciplinary Project

Each summer, group activities in the Learning Center focus on a centerwide theme. in 1998, the theme was inspired by the 100th anniversary of New York and Brooklyn merging into a new, consolidated New York City.

As her group prepared their end-of-summer museum exhibit, Chelsea, age 8, explains what her class is studying: "We are learning about the `Big Apple' because it is the 100th anniversary of New York City. The boroughs of New York got married 100 years ago."

Chelsea attends the summer and after-school program of the Morris L. Eisenstein Learning Center, a child care and after-school program in Brooklyn, New York. Each summer, group activities in the Learning Center focus on a centerwide theme. In 1998, the theme was inspired by the 100th anniversary of New York and Brooklyn merging into a new, consolidated New York City. The summer program ended with the creation of a school museum exhibit that included an 8-foot-long, 7-foot-tall suspension bridge that the children could walk across.

Each group in the Learning Center contributed an exhibit to the museum, which was set up in a large all-purpose community room. Along one wall, a sign announced, "I Live in the City." Using cardboard, clay, and various props, the 5-year-olds created an exhibit of landmarks in Brooklyn, including the "Big Clock" and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The 3-year-olds attached drawings of themselves to paper cut-outs of their houses, which were then mounted on a map of Brooklyn. Other walls supported exhibits titled, "Brooklyn, Then and Now," and "East New York, Then and Now." Even the Bronx Zoo is present, constructed out of plastic building blocks. As her class toured the museum, a teacher of a 3-year-old group asked her children, "What is this? Who lives here?" Children shouted out, "Animals! Monkeys! It's the zoo!"

The children in the oldest group, 7- to 12-year-olds, constructed a cardboard and paper model of New York City and its bridges. Katrina and Keith, both age 9, proudly showed off model bridges they had made out of milk cartons, cardboard, and wool yarn. Keith told visitors that the roadways in their model bridges were held up by the yarn, but in the real bridges, "wire holds up the road." Anthony, also age 9 and another member of the group, added, "That's what makes them suspension bridges."

At the center of the museum was an 8-foot-long replica of the Brooklyn Bridge. The actual bridge, completed in 1883, is a suspension bridge that spans the East River. Since the original New York City was located on Manhattan Island and Brooklyn is located on Long Island, the bridge played a major role in creating one city out of two. Building the replica of the Brooklyn Bridge was the culmination of the multi-step interdisciplinary process at the Eisenstein Learning Center, which involved children between the ages of 7 and 12 in science, history, math, art, poetry, and writing.

The multiage groups began the project by reading a children's book, The Brooklyn Bridge (Mann, 1996). After writing short reports about the history of New York City and its bridges, the children and their teachers went on a trip to a promenade overlooking New York harbor and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. From the promenade, several children were able to identify the bridge, as well as the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and famous buildings along the Manhattan skyline. They drew sketches of the bridge, and they listened to their teacher read the poem "The New Colossus," written in 1883 by Emma Lazarus as a tribute to the just-completed Statue of Liberty (Ravitch, 1990). The children expressed surprise that Lazarus referred to the Statue of Liberty, now dwarfed by the World Trade Center and other skyscrapers, as a colossus. Lazarus also described how the Statue of Liberty commands the "air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame." The teacher explained that the twin cities were New York and Brooklyn before they merged.

As the group slowly walked across the bridge, the teachers encouraged the children to pause, look, ask questions, and describe what they see. Some of the younger children were nervous walking on the bridge, worrying that it would fall down. A group of the older children and the teachers took their hands, and they all began to jump up and down to test the bridge's strength. When the tension was eased, and the children were laughing, the children and their teachers discussed what made the Brooklyn Bridge a suspension bridge. When the teachers asked, "What holds the bridge up?," most of the children pointed towards the twin giant granite towers that stand near the opposite shores. Although the students had read about suspension bridges, it was difficult to convince them that the roadway actually hangs from the four woven steel cables draped across the towers and from the network of wires that connect the road and cables. During the walk a teacher asked, "Is there any way to test what holds up a suspension bridge?" The children were uncertain. Finally, they decided to build their own suspension bridges to see if the idea really works.

From the Brooklyn Bridge, the children could see both the Williamsburg Bridge (opened in 1903) and the Manhattan Bridge (opened in 1905) slightly upriver. Their teachers explained how these bridges were built decades after the Brooklyn Bridge's completion, when steel production had expanded and new technology was available. As a result, these bridges have steel towers and can carry greater weight. The children saw that subway trains ran across these bridges, for example, but not on the Brooklyn Bridge.

When they returned to the Learning Center, the children discussed what they had learned and they mapped out the activities for the next few days. They touched up and painted their sketches, wrote stories and poems about the history of New York City, and worked in teams to design and build model suspension bridges. The model bridges were constructed using half-gallon milk and juice containers for the towers, pieces of manila folder for the roadway, and wool for the cables and wires. The sketches, paintings, and models were all displayed at the end-of-summer museum exhibit.

When their models were complete, the children met with a community volunteer, an amateur carpenter. Ten of the children volunteered to help him design and construct a suspension bridge that they could walk across. They used their pictures of the Brooklyn Bridge and their model suspension bridges to help figure out the materials needed to build a suspension bridge. They decided to use wood for the towers, plywood for the roadbed, polyethylene rope for the cables and wires, and nails, screws, and eyebolts to hold everything together. They measured and helped cut the wood, and then assembled and painted the bridge.

While they worked, the team, and the other children, speculated about whether their bridge was strong enough to hold them. They discussed if they should "test it with a big weight" or "have one of the littler kids walk across first." They decided that "for safety," they would use the weight first. If the bridge held up, progressively bigger kids, "but no teachers," could try walking across.

As the children worked on the bridge, their conversation and behavior demonstrated their sense of ownership of the construction project. Demetrius, age 11, who was responsible for much of the measuring, explained to the other children that it was "an 8-foot-long suspension bridge and the ropes hold up the roadway. The quarter-inch plywood road is 2-feet wide, and the distance between the towers is 55 inches." Christopher, age 12, who had some previous experience with carpentry, was a leader on the construction project, helping the younger children hold the electric drill and saw, attach nuts and bolts, and hammer the nails. According to Chris, "I like working with wood, building things, and showing the other kids which tools are right to use."

Yvette, one of the group teachers, felt that the entire project was very successful. "The kids learned how the bridge was built from a book before our trip, but when they walked across, they could actually see the cables that held the roadway up." She further explained that "the bridge project brings all the different subjects we study together. The children discussed the history of the bridge and the city, why we needed the bridge, the problems engineers and architects faced designing and building a bridge that would support all the weight, and what it was like to be a worker on the bridge. The children loved to work with the tools and wood, but the most important part was that they learned to plan ahead and to work together."

As visitors came in to tour the museum, the older children were happy to identify their handiwork. They pointed out the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg bridges in their model of New York City, and they talked about how they had worked together to build the larger wooden bridge. The younger children were excited about walking across the wooden bridge, and they crossed it again and again. As you can see from the photographs, the Learning Center version of the Brooklyn-to-Manhattan suspension bridge really worked!

While every class may not be able to build a suspension bridge that children can walk across, we believe this project offers ideas for developing thematic, interdisciplinary, multiage school projects that can be implemented in other settings (see the Appendix). The children made and tested hypotheses through each stage of the project. They gained social and academic skills in the process of doing research, writing, making a site visit, drawing the bridge, and making cardboard models. Of primary significance was their ability to read and write about a historical event, and then visit the actual site. Finally, they established a sense of ownership over their learning as they helped to plan and set up the museum displays.

Maxine Greene (1993), an educational philosopher, describes the importance of metaphors. Greene believes that the formulation of metaphors plays an essential role in the creation of meaning by all human beings. For the children at the Learning Center, the Brooklyn Bridge--in books, real life, pictures, and their model suspension bridge--became a metaphor for continuity and change over time. It represented the birth of their city and of their own ability to be creative learners.

References

Corbett, S. (1978). Bridges. New York: Four Winds Press.

Greene, M. (1993). Diversity and inclusion: Towards a curriculum for human beings. Teachers College Record, 95(2), 211-221.

Mann, E. (1996). The Brooklyn Bridge. New York: Mikaya Press.

McCullough, D. (1972). The great bridge. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Ravitch, D. (Ed.). (1990). The American reader. New York: HarperCollins.

Appendix:

Exploring the Relationship Among History, Geography, and Technology

Even if they do not have the Brooklyn Bridge in their neighborhood, teachers can use interdisciplinary projects to help elementary school children discover the relationship among technology, history, and geography. Since ancient times, bridges have been constructed using different designs, much of it depending on the existing geographical conditions and the availability of technology and materials (Corbett, 1978). Hence, there are bridges built from rope, wood, rock, bricks, concrete, and steel.

Children can study ancient Roman arches and learn how this technological discovery made possible the construction of aqueducts, buildings, and bridges. They can search for examples of arches in their communities and then build miniature keystone arches. Modern suspension bridges, like the Verrazzano-Narrows in New York Harbor and Golden Gate in San Francisco Bay, span large, open spaces. Arch bridges, which generally span shorter distances, often consist of a series of connected arches that stand on a row of natural or man-made islands. Very long bridges, like the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in Maryland, are actually a series of different bridges attached to each other.

Just as bridges allow roads to cross rivers, canals make it possible for rivers to cross dry land. The construction of canals in the 19th century created a vast transportation network across the eastern United States. The remnants of famous canal systems have been turned into parks in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and along the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. Classes can visit the canals, study how they transformed society, and construct models of the locks used to raise and lower the water level, and therefore allow boats to navigate the canals. Similar interdisciplinary units can focus on the idea of crossroads or on the way that towns grew up along railroad lines.

RELATED ARTICLE

The New Colossus, by Emma Lazarus

   Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
   With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
   Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
   A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
   Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
   Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
   Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
   The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

   "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
   With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
   Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
   The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
   Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
   I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Judith Y. Singer is Assistant Professor, Early Childhood and Elementary Education, Long Island University-Brooklyn Campus, Brooklyn, New York. Cecelia Goodman is 5th-grade teacher, Public School 197, Brooklyn, New York. Theodora Ridley is Director of the Morris L. Eisenstein Learning Center, Brooklyn, New York. Alan Singer is Associate Professor, Education, Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York.