Pupils

While students at an all-girls school in Maryland were laboring to build bridges out of Popsicle sticks, their teachers were trying to build bridges for them to the male-dominated field of engineering. The stick bridges shattered under 60 pounds of pressure. Teachers at the Holton- Arms School in Bethesda hope their seemingly unique engineering course will make girls' interest in the field longer-lasting. "It's about taking risks and getting them over the anxiety of always having to be right all the time," said physics teacher Chris Lee, who designed the course four years ago and wears a tie-dyed lab coat and a goatee.

Baltimore County school administrators have ordered all teachers to begin using a grading system next month that will require them to judge whether each of their students has mastered more than 100 specific skills. The decision, which was made by top administrators last week and communicated to teachers by their principals last Thursday and Friday, is opposed by the teachers union and dozens of teachers who say it is cumbersome and time-consuming and will not be a useful tool. The system, known as Articulated Instruction Module or AIM, was designed by a longtime school system employee and had been implemented sporadically in the past several months, although it was supposed to be mandatory throughout the county.

Their first public appearance was a smash hit. Six Chesapeake Bay Middle School students stood before state and federal environmental experts Wednesday in Annapolis to explain that they want to build an artificial reef at the Downs Park fishing pier in Pasadena to improve water quality and fishing opportunities. They walked out to applause from the adults and some helpful suggestions for their next audience: Gov. Martin O'Malley and the rest of the Board of Public Works. "This is good.

Any visitor to the empty halls and classrooms of New Town Elementary on Tuesday morning didn't have to spend long wondering where everyone had gone. Screams emanated from the gym at the Owings Mills school, where a roiling sea of purple - dotted with cameras galore and some "Wacco for Flacco" signs - eagerly awaited Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco. "You guys are louder than 70,000," Flacco told the crowd of about 750 cheering kids. The quarterback visited New Town, as well as the Chatsworth School in Reisterstown, as a prize for children who won a local CBS radio contest, "Bring Joe Flacco to Your School."

At Stoneleigh Elementary School in Baltimore County, so many of the 624 students walk to school these days that by the end of one year, the PTA calculated, its kids had trekked a combined 14,000 miles - the equivalent of a trip halfway around the world. But at Mills-Parole School in Annapolis, where sidewalks were recently installed to encourage walking, most students still arrive on wheels. Trying to make kids fitter and more independent while saving the environment, advocates and some parents are promoting a return to the days when walking to school was the norm.

St. Margaret School in Bel Air observed the annual International Day of Peace Monday with prayers, songs and the dedication of a "peace pole." More than 500 children in the lower school marched from a prayer service in the gymnasium to the 6-foot-tall pole inscribed on all four sides with "May Peace Prevail on Earth" in four languages - English, Spanish, Korean and Creole, in a nod to their sister school in Haiti. "Prevail means to be strong and persist," said Jimmy Beyer, a fifth-grader.

Joan Hecht Lorber, who made newspaper headlines in 1939 when she survived the sinking of a torpedoed passenger ship in the early days of World War II, died of Parkinson's disease Aug. 26 at her Boca Raton, Fla., home. She was 80 and had lived in Pikesville until the 1950s. As a 9-year-old, Joan Hecht was returning to Baltimore aboard the liner SS Athenia when it was sunk by a German U-boat after its captain mistook the vessel for an armed merchant cruiser, not the Donaldson American Line passenger ship it was. German authorities immediately suppressed the facts surrounding the torpedoing.

Sitting at the desk that would be hers for the school year, Casey Burton peered inside the new, black backpack she found hanging on the back of her chair and smiled. "Look, you got a notebook this year," said her mother, Rebecca West. The 7-year-old's smile grew wider as West pointed out other materials: a new pencil box, fresh pencils, crayons and scissors. "And," the second-grader said, holding them up with a grin, "I got glue sticks." She and hundreds of others had poured into Dundalk's Sandy Plains Elementary on Friday afternoon for "Sneak a Peek at Your Seat," during which they met their teachers, explored their classrooms and glimpsed some of the classmates they would be rubbing elbows with Monday, when school starts in Baltimore County.

Baltimore County students entering middle and high school have until Friday to confirm that they are, in fact, area residents - or face being withdrawn, according to school officials. "We just want everybody to get this done so it will be one less thing they have to worry about as they go back to school," said Charles A. Herndon, a district spokesman. Now in its second year, the residency verification policy was designed, at least in part, to prevent students who live outside the county from enrolling - and to help schools maintain accurate student records.

Twenty-four middle-schoolers from South Korea are in Howard County this month trying to improve their English and learn more about American culture during the fourth annual Summer Cultural Exchange Program. The students have been taking rigorous classes at Bonnie Branch Middle School, where they spend five days a week in a five-hour English for Speakers of Other Languages, or ESOL, class. They work on reading, writing, listening and pronunciation. Korean is not spoken in the class. This year there has been more of an emphasis on writing.