Students in Pam Johnson’s Grade 3 class at Queen Elizabeth Elementary School in Queensborough have been awaiting Pink Shirt Day for months. Since December, Johnson’s 23 students have been fashioning paper cranes – 1,000 to be exact – that will adorn the school’s gym this week.
Elizabeth Elementary School have created
1,000 paper cranes for the school’s peace
and kindness assembly this week.
Johnson laughed when asked if it was a challenge for her students.
“I wouldn’t recommend doing it with Grade 3s again, but they have done an amazing job, and the cranes are unbelievable,” she said.
The project is inspired by Eleanor Coerr’s children’s book Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, the story of a Japanese girl who, after she is diagnosed with cancer, sets out to fold 1,000 paper cranes in hopes of being granted a wish as foretold in Japanese legend.
Johnson said her students struggled in the beginning, but slowly they mastered the craft. When the Record spoke with Johnson on Friday, she said there were only a few cranes left to fold before the assembly.
“It’s just really incredible how they (the students) have come together, and if you ask them what this is about, they say, ‘peace,’” she said.
