Butterflies in Hawk Hall

We hope that you noticed the many cardstock butterflies hanging from the ceiling for nearly the length of "Hawk Hall." Each butterfly represents a book that was read this year by middle school students who dedicated their reading to a child who was lost during The Holocuast.

Mrs. Kahn attended a workshop on Holocaust Curriculum at the annual conference for N.J. School Librarians and brought the idea back to discuss with Mrs. Cabourg, Mrs. Maketansky, Ms. Ross and Mrs. Hall who embraced the idea and ran with it.

The butterfly appears frequently as a symbol of freedom in Holocaust literature, most notably in the profoundly moving non-fiction title: I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children's Drawings and Poems from Terezin Concentration Camp, 1942 - 1944 and in the equally moving fiction title by Patricia Polacco, The Butterfly.

Students did not have to limit their reading to books about The Holocaust. Any reading of any book could be dedicated to the memory of their lost child. At the beginning of the 2007 - 2008 school year, Mrs. Cabourg and Mrs. Maketansky introduced the year-long project along with a brief overview of the historical period and some of the fiction and non-fiction literature that has resulted from this shameful period in human history. Connections were made to one of the Seven Pillars of Character - Tolerance. Each student was given the name of a child who did not survive The Holocaust so that roughly 160 out of the 1.5 million are not forgotten.