A shrine built, a penny at a time
The 1-ton book of peace in the making isn't the only big thing on campus at Groton-Dunstable Regional Middle School.
While Betsy Sawyer's students labor over their massive tome, "Pages for Peace," other youngsters are celebrating their not-too-shabby accomplishment: collecting 1.5 million pennies, one for every Jewish child believed to have perished during the Holocaust.
The project, initiated two years ago by teacher Niki Rockwell, was designed to help students visualize the sheer number of young souls lost in what many consider the 20th century's greatest tragedy.
"So many people were taken away," said Erin McElroy, 16, a sophomore at Groton-Dunstable Regional High School, who was among the original group of Rockwell's eighth-graders who took on the project. "It makes me wonder what would happen if these people had been allowed to live."
Groton-Dunstable is one of the least diverse school districts in Massachusetts, Rockwell said. The vast majority of its students are white and Catholic, she said. Teachers are often pushing students to consider the diversity of the larger world.
Tangible work, like writing letters or counting pennies, helps students make sense of big topics they have little reason to contemplate in their daily lives, said Rockwell.
"Sometimes it feels like we are living in a bubble," she said.
Yesterday, Rockwell's past and present students were to participate in a ceremony in the middle school's Performing Arts Center to unveil the amassed pennies, kept in a clear, 60-cubic-foot acrylic container that officials said would remain in the school as a memorial.
The coins mostly came from residents, including the students. In September, they suffered a setback when they discovered a thief had pilfered 125,000 pennies, or about half the coins they had collected.
But news coverage of the theft solved the crisis. Pennies flowed in to the school from relatives of Holocaust survivors, well-wishers, and folk like the Maryland man who donated a framed set of silver dollars that he asked be sold and converted into pennies.
By the end of September, the students had their 1.5 million pieces of copper. That's equal to $15,000, but McElroy said the figure is deceptive, given how the project made her reassess the value of human beings.
"It's just really inspired me," she said. "Everybody has worth."
