If you walked down the middle school hallway during Advisory this week, you definitely heard us before you saw us.

Starting 6th grade is a massive shift—new schedules, bigger expectations, and a room full of peers who might still feel like strangers. That’s why Ms. Rowlands kicked off her latest Advisory unit with a challenge designed to break the ice, test our patience, and turn a room full of individual students into a connected team.

The task was simple in theory, but tricky in practice: build a freestanding tower using only cups and string. No hands allowed!

Within a few moments of receiving direction, the quiet classroom transformed into a buzzing hive of negotiation, trial, and error. Ideas were thrown out, towers collapsed (along with a few dramatic gasps), and strategies shifted on the fly. You could see real-time leadership emerging—some students took charge as blueprint designers, others were master stackers, and some acted as the ultimate hype crew keeping morale high when a structure folded in half.

Was it quiet? Not even a little bit. But the best kind of learning rarely is.

By the end of the period, we had cardboard skyscrapers of varying stability, a lot of laughter, and—most importantly—a classroom of 6th graders who realized they can solve tough problems together. Check out a few snapshot moments from the challenge below!

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