Whitwell Middle School Paper Clip Project

What an incredibly moving experience today, as we spent time in Social Studies methods watching an hour-long documentary on the Holocaust Project undertaken at Whitwell Middle School of Whitwell, Tennessee beginning in 1998 and continuing today. I won't recount the entire story, but encourage anyone interested to scout out the video for themselves. I have shared just a few photos here - and want to share just a few impressions.

This photo is from the documentary - showing an eighth-grade class in Whitwell with their vice principal.

The first thing that caught my attention was the purpose given for embarking on this project. The school's principal, vice principal, and social studies teacher felt a need to facilitate a project which would promote an understanding of diversity and tolerance within the children of their overwhelmingly homogeneous community.  We should all be so bold!

Secondly, the project was SO inquiry method! What a fine example of a project being student-led. AND I love that the teacher did not feel the need to "wrap things up" at the end of the year, but was willing to allow the project to spill over for four more years...and even to today. The paperclip idea all began with one student asking "What is six million?"...

The class wrote away to celebrities in effort to collect six million paperclips to represent the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. After NBC caught the story...and after four years of effort, the students had more than 29 million paperclips, each with a unique story.

I was so thankful that the German couple (reporters) got involved, showing the students that though the Holocaust occurred in Germany, Germans are not monsters, just regular folks like you and I. We must all remember and bear the burden of human responsibility for the monstrosity of Hitler's acts and regime.

This authentic German railroad car was a gift from the German reporters, long-time friends of the school's project. It is now filled with 11 million paperclips, and stands as a memorial within Whitwell to the Holocaust victims and survivors.

Finally,  I was blown away thinking about the long-term impact that this incredibly integrated project has had and will continue to have not only upon the students of the school (over multiple years), but upon the entire community - as well as the countless other schools and communities which were touched by this project in some way. What a phenomenal memorial - not only to the Holocaust victims and survivors, but to the profound potential of sound, daring education!