Children at US School Show Their Support for Victims in Japan

30 March 2011

Students making paper cranes at Somerville Elementary School in Ridgewood, New Jersey

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

Cranes are large birds with long legs and necks. In Japan and other East Asian cultures, they represent luck and long life.

Japanese tradition says a person who folds one thousand paper cranes gets the right to make a wish. Some schoolchildren in the United States have been folding cranes. They want to show they care about the victims of the March eleventh earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

Almost forty Japanese-American students attend Somerville Elementary School in Ridgewood, New Jersey. But all five hundred twenty-five students at the school have heard about the disasters. So they have decorated their school with paper origami cranes. Their wish is for a speedy recovery for the Japanese people.

Art teacher Samantha Stankiewicz says the activity gives students a way to express empathy for victims.

SAMANTHA STANKIEWICZ: "For children, the folding of the cranes has been a really positive way for them to feel like they’re actively engaged, even though the cranes are symbolic."

These students thought out loud as they folded cranes in the school library.

BOY: "The crane is a symbol of hope, so we try to have a lot of hope for those people in Japan."