Title:
Children at US School Show Their Support for Victims
in Japan
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Education Report.
See text below
Text:
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 gave
students a way to express empathy for victims.She
says, "For children, the folding of the cranes has
been a really positive way for them to feel like
they're actively engaged."One boy said, "The crane
is a symbol of hope, so we try to have a lot of hope
for those people in Japan." And a girl at the school
said, "It makes me feel really happy that everyone's
caring for another country." And that care was not
just in the form of paper cranes. The school
principal, Lorna Oates-Santos, says children at
Somerville Elementary raised about two thousand
dollars for disaster relief agencies. The two
agencies they chose were the American Red Cross and
Save the Children.The school also has a television
club that produces weekly programs on different
subjects. Fourth-grade teacher Gabrielle King is the
director of the club, and says the students were
involved in the school's efforts. "When the
earthquake happened," she says, "the children wanted
to know what they could do to inform other students
and raise awareness for the people in Japan." So
they decided to do a show on the earthquake and to
also make the origami cranes.Some American children
have shown their feelings for the victims in Japan
in other ways. Yasuhisa Kawamura is Japan's deputy
consul general in New York.He says one young girl
brought a painting she had made to the consulate.
The painting showed the two countries, Japan and the
United States, shaking hands over the ocean, and
saying "We are with you." Mr. Kawamura said
consulate staff members were "very moved and touched
by this young girl's expression."The East Asia
Program at Cornell University in the United States
has a lesson plan and directions for folding origami
cranes. You can find a link at
voaspecialenglish.com. For VOA Special English, I'm
Alex Villarreal.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
