CRF-L Archives

From: "ladybugslippers40" <>
Subject: [CRF] CHANGING THE WORLD, ONE CLIP AT A TIME
Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 09:28:57 -0700

>CHANGING THE WORLD, ONE CLIP AT A TIME
>
>What can one person possibly do in this large world? How can one
>person, or one small group accomplish anything significant to
>help bring people together in understanding and peace? Listen to
>this true and moving story....
>
>In 1998 deputy principal and football coach David Smith, at
>Whitwell Middle School (Whitwell, Tennessee) attended a teacher
>training course in nearby Chattanooga. He came back and proposed
>that an after-school course on the Holocaust be offered at the
>school. This -- in a school with hardly any ethnic and no
>Jewish students.
>
>English and social sciences teacher Sandra Roberts was selected
>to teach, and in October, 1998 she held the first session. She
>began by reading aloud from Anne Frank's DIARY OF A YOUNG
>GIRL and Elie Wiesel's NIGHT. She read aloud because most of the
>students could not afford to buy books.
>
>What gripped the eighth graders most as the course progressed,
>was the sheer number of Jews put to death by the Third Reich. Six
>million. They could hardly fathom such an immense figure.
>
>One day, Roberts was explaining to the class that some
>compassionate people in 1940s Europe stood up for the Jews. After
>the Nazis invaded Norway, many courageous Norwegians expressed
>solidarity with their Jewish fellow citizens by pinning ordinary
>paper clips to their lapels, as Jews were forced to wear a Star
>of David on theirs.
>
>Then someone had the idea to collect six million paper clips to
>represent the six million Holocaust victims. The idea caught on,
>and the students began bringing in paper clips, from home, from
>aunts and uncles and friends. They set up a Web page. A few weeks
>later, the first letter arrived -- then others. Many contained
>paper clips. By the end of the school year, the group had
>assembled 100,000 clips. But it occurred to the teachers that
>collecting six million paper clips at that rate would take a
>lifetime.
>
>The group's activities have long spilled over from Roberts'
>classroom. It's now called the Holocaust Project. Across the
>hall, students have created a concentration camp simulation with
>paper cutouts of themselves pasted on the wall. Chicken wire
>stretches across the wall to represent electrified fences. Wire
>mesh is hung with shoes to represent the millions of shoes the
>victims left behind when they were marched to death chambers. And
>every year now they reenact the "walk" to give students at least
>an inkling of what people must have felt when Nazi guards marched
>them off to camps.
>
>Meanwhile, the paper clip counting continues. Students gather for
>their Wednesday meeting, each wearing the group's polo shirt
>emblazoned: "Changing the World, One Clip at a Time." All sorts
>of clips arrive -- silver and bronze colored clips, colorful
>plastic-coated clips, small clips, large clips, round clips,
>triangular clips and even clips fashioned from wood. The students
>file all the letters they receive in ring binders.
>
>Their plan is to obtain an authentic German railroad car from
>the 1940s, one that may have actually transported victims to
>camps. The car will be turned into a museum that will house all
>the paper clips, as well as display the many letters received
>from around the world.
>
>When the project is finally completed, for generations of
>Whitwell eighth graders, a paper clip will never again be just a
>paper clip. Instead, it will carry a message of perseverance,
>empathy, tolerance and understanding. One student put it like
>this: "Now, when I see someone, I think before I speak, I think
>before I act and I think before I judge."
>
>Can one person, or one small group, truly do anything to help
>bring humanity together in understanding and peace? Just ask the
>students at Whitwell and all of those around the world who are
>helping them to collect paper clips!
>
>POSTSCRIPT:
>You may go to http://www.Marionschools.org for more information
>on the Holocaust Project, and check out the latest paper clip
>count. Would you like to help the students? Paper clips are
>gratefully accepted by: Whitwell Middle School, Holocaust
>Project, 1130 Main St., Whitwell, TN 37397. Almost four million
>paper clips have been collected. Let's help bring them over the
>top!



NetZero Platinum
No Banner Ads and Unlimited Access
Sign Up Today - Only $9.95 per month!
http://www.netzero.net

This thread:

• [CRF] CHANGING THE WORLD, ONE CLIP AT A TIME by "ladybugslippers40" <>