The Paperclip Project

Running head: Paper Clips 1

Written Assignment – The Paper Clip Project

Gaetano Pampinella

Rasmussen College

Author Note

This written assignment is being submitted on April 3rd, 2012, for Susan Trestrail

G124-T English Composition

Paper Clips 2

The Paper Clip Project

On April 3rd, 2012 I attended my first English Composition Class at Rasmussen Collage.

I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect from this class when I first got the classroom. As a first assignment we were told to watch a movie in class about the paper clip. I first my initial thought was great! Some type of short documentary on how the paper clip is made or its origin and I have to write a short paper about it. As I know reflect back at my first thought I think to myself “Wow! How wrong I was.

As I sat in class and watched the beginning of the Movie I found myself immediately immersed and drawn to the story the movie was about to tell and share with myself and the rest of the classroom.

The movie was a documentary based on the actual events of “The Paper Clip Project”.

The Paper Clips Project is a project by middle school students from the small southeastern Tennessee city of Whitwell who created a monument for the Holocaust victims in Nazi Germany. It started in 1998 as a simple 8th-grade project and evolved into one gaining worldwide attention. At last count, over 30 million paper clips had been received. Paper Clips, the movie I watched in class is an award-winning documentary film about the project, that was released in 2004 by Miramax Films.

Paper Clips 3

In 1998 Whitwell Middle School Principal Linda M. Hooper asked Sandra Roberts to begin a Holocaust Education class that would be the basis for teaching tolerance in a voluntary after-school program. Sandra Roberts held the first class in the fall of 1998. Soon the students were overwhelmed with the massive scale of the Holocaust and asked Mrs. Hooper if they could collect...