EXHIBITING AND UNDERSTANDING HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES WORLDWIDE

These web pages depict exhibits on Human Rights made by 8th-grade students at Blacksburg Middle School, in Kendra Atkins-Boyce's and Sandy Sim's English classes. In March 2008 Ms. Atkins-Boyce's students spent a few days studying the Rwandan genocide, focusing on stories about the genocide and the memorials that commemorate the events of April-July 1994. They read exerpts from Paul Rusesabagina's book An Ordinary Man, which describes the story portrayed in the film Hotel Rwanda, and another text, Machete Season, which attempts to understand the experience of the genocidaires, or killers. The students learned about the colonial and postcolonial experience of Rwanda leading up to the events of 1994. Bernice Hausman led discussion with the students and showed pictures from her trip to Rwanda in June 2007.

In May 2008, students of both teachers studied other historical incidents around the globe concerning human rights and made their own exhibits on related topics of their choice. The images depicted in these web pages represent their effort to understand and communicate about human rights abuses to others.

Directly below are pictures of Rwanda: a terraced hillside near Kigali, in the Gasabo district, and the sign outside of Ntarama church, where approximately 5000 individuals lost their lives in the 1994 genocide. They were taken by Bernice Hausman on her 2007 trip to Rwanda with the ACC-IAC (Atlantic Coast Conference Interinstitutional Academic Collaborative).

The following pictures are of the students' exhibits. Please check back to the site later in the summer to see a more comprehensive selection of exhibits.