Ambler Students Learn Life Lessons While Building Bridges

(CBS) - Students at a Montgomery County elementary school learned a lesson about engineering and human relations. They built bridges, both literally and figuratively.

"We'd go downstairs there'd be hundreds of kids down there all busy working," says Kathleen Dilts, principal of St. Anthony St. Joseph Elementary in Ambler. She chose the bridge-building project as a way to bring students from different grade levels together to work in groups.

"We gave them a challenge: their bridge had to cross a river of 30 inches. It had to be eight inches above the river and they had to carry the peace train, which was a wooden train that we pulled across (the bridge.)"

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The metaphor was not lost on the students.

"It really brought the older kids and the younger kids together as friends because we don't see them a lot," one student says.

"I learned to have more patience with the younger kids," says another.

"I learned that you can't do it all by yourself, you can do a lot of teamwork with everybody else," says another student. "It gets the job done right."

Reported by Pat Loeb, KYW Newsradio 1060