“Crane Collaboration”: A story about uniting the school
April 16, 2021
If you have recently found yourself in downstairs B-Hall in the past two weeks, you may have been fascinated by the 1,050 bright colored origami cranes hanging in a perfect line of the rainbow along the hallway. This project began on the Monday before spring break and the “very last piece of installation was hung at the sound of the fourth block bell on Thursday afternoon before break.”. The project started with giving the online students paper, they folded their cranes and then the online students sent them back to the classroom for the in person students to continue. They hung both the online and virtual students’ cranes together. “Each student hand strung fourteen cranes together and then we put those 75 columns of it across to make the grid of 1,050 hanging paper cranes”. Mr. Bratcher, the media arts teacher here at Wando has been doing his best to incorporate as much of a communal aspect in his classroom as possible while he’s been faced with the barrier between remote and virtual students, and this project was the perfect way to do so. “The in person and virtual students both collaborated to create a community installation”. Not only did this remarkable project create a community in their classroom, but it was a history lesson too. This project was inspired by the book called Sadako and the one thousand paper cranes. The students got to “learn about world war two and basically when they dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sadako survived as a child but later passed away, but she folded one thousand paper cranes”. So it is said that if you fold a thousand paper cranes and then you make a wish, it should come true. On top of all of this, the students learned more about visual art, elements, principles and sculptures. It seems as if this was the most suitable project for the media arts class in 2021’s school year, unifying our classrooms and brightening our hallways and students within.