The Paperclip Project

Another school which has met this challenge is located in. In 1998 teachers and the school principal of a small homogeneous rural community in Whitwell Texas, with the collaboration of students, began a project stemming from a lesson from the German Holocaust. Students began by reading the diary of Anne Frank. Then, in order to better grasp the idea of 6 million Holocaust victims, this eighth grade class decided to start a paper clip drive as part of an afterschool project. The paperclip was chosen because of its symbolic meaning. The paperclip, they discovered, had been invented in Norway and was worn as a symbol of protest during the Nazi reign in Europe. While Jews were forced to wear the Star of David as a means of identification, the Norwegians wore the paperclip to show their disapproval while demonstrating solidarity. Again, a variety of literacies are used to further the cause multicultural education, but the paper clip project was different. While literature provided historical background it was the combination of other genres they put a face on the victims and gave life to the lesson. Students began writing letters petitioning various individuals and organizations for help in their effort to collect paperclips. As correspondence began to arrive students designed sorting, cataloging and filing systems for every piece of mail they received. Apart from letters of request, they also sent letters of thanks. They initiated website and Facebook posts. Then, after collecting nearly 100,000 paper clips word reached national and international media. Their efforts brought journalists from the Washington Post and made the nightly news. Two German journalists living in the US, Peter and Dagmar Schroeder, who had ties to Holocaust survivors, took it upon themselves to visit this small community. After visiting the school they were moved to seek out an original rail car from Nazi Germany. It was used to store what eventually grew to be 24 million paper clips, and as a memorial. Worldwide notoriety gained them further support and lead to a visit by actual Holocaust survivors who personally thanked them and their school for their efforts. Documentary footage of Paperclip Project reveals that in this homogeneous rural Tennessee school not only had the students been changed, but so had the community and beyond. (Paperclip Project 2003) What began as a classroom lesson on prejudice, eventually included participants from around the world, carrying the message of message diversity, tolerance and understanding. As a future teacher I fully expect incorporate multiple literacies as a means of teaching multiculturalism in a deeper or meaningful way.