Kelle Taylor, of Cranberry Township, looks at some of the projects that the sixth-grade students made and put on display Friday morning, June 2, at Haine Middle School during the Anne Frank Gallery Walk. Shane Potter/Butler Eagle

CRANBERRY TWP — Parents and teachers on Friday morning, June 2, got to see the fruits of the labor of Haine Middle School students who have worked on a yearlong project to teach global tolerance and empathy through the lens of the Holocaust and other refugee crises of the last century.

Students built scale models, presented book reports and solicited donations. The project, now in its second year, was formally known as “Facing Today: Using Historical Empathy to Process the World.” Students made use of all of their learning skills, including language skills, math and social studies, for this project.

While last year’s project focused mainly on the study of Anne Frank’s diary and the Holocaust, students this year broadened their horizons to focus on more recent refugee crises, such as those that occurred in Cuba during the 1980s and ‘90s and in the Middle East starting in the mid-2010s.

“We wanted [students] to understand what these refugees are experiencing and build empathy, not just for refugees, but for all people in the world that have a different footprint than themselves,” said Julie Fornadel, sixth-grade teacher at Haine.

The rear wall of the gymnasium was lined with posters of artwork featuring quotes from Anne Frank herself, including one that read, “No one ever became poor by giving.”

Along the opposite wall of the gymnasium, groups of Haine students showed off cardboard scale models of Prinsengracht 263, also known as the Anne Frank House, the hiding place of the Frank family while Anne was writing her diary in 1943.