Welcome Back Friends!

“True teachers use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create bridges of their own.”       ~Nikos Kazantzakis

I love this quote.  Each year, I like to capture students’ attention and guide our instruction and time together for pull-out by establishing a theme.  This summer had me thinking a lot about bridges — both literally and metaphorically.  My boys and I were recently recalling the fun time we had exploring the Natural Stone Bridge and caves in the Adirondacks years ago.  It was amazing to see the result of millions of years of glacial movement and geology right before us.  Fascinating!  It’s a place we’d like to return to again some day.

On our trek south for vacation this year, we were reminded of our crossing of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel on vacation two years ago.  This magnificent structure is known as an engineering wonder of the world and was unprecidented went built back in 1964.

The idea of a bridge brings to mind the joining or the coming together over a spanse that otherwise would have been too far apart to cross.  Metaphorically speaking, we need more bridges today… and we need to teach our children to build them.  Opportunity to connect with others unlike one’s self (maybe even from across the world), appreciate differences, share ideas, analyze problems, and brainstorm solutions are all ways that we can build bridges.  I look forward to fostering students’ engineering capabilities this year as we build bridges together!

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