Thursday, February 18, 2021

“Thirty Minutes Over Oregon” draws out art

My college friend/fifth grade teacher Sara Peters told me that Thirty Minutes Over Oregon: A Japanese Pilots World War II Story is one of several books in a unit on empathy that she teaches. 

A classroom focus on empathy is alone enough to make my heart soar, but there’s more.

The kids were asked to create an artistic response to one of the books. Some of her students at Miller School in Holliston, MA, were moved in some way by the story of Nobuo Fujita, who bombed the U.S. mainland in 1942, then returned twenty years later…to apologize.  

Here is their lovely work:







It may be that neither girls nor non-white students are among the Thirty Minutes Over Oregon artists. But I’m thrilled at the range of the other books the class could choose from:


Stiff competition. I am humbled to be among them.

Thanks again for sharing, Sara. Empathy is not a given. It must be modeled!

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