Playing the roles so realistically evoked memories, including painful ones, for some of the volunteer actors.
    “I went through this process twice,’’ Helmuth Reinhardt mused after the reenactment. “This has brought back a lot of memories.’’
    Because of the difficulty of immigrating to the United States as a single person, he left his family in Austria and emigrated to Canada in 1955.
    Unable to speak any English, he had been told by a ship’s steward before docking in Halifax, Nova Scotia, that he was to receive $10 to be used for train fare when he was processed.
    After an attendant in the processing center asked him if he could speak English and he answered no in German, Reinhardt recalled the attendant “smirked, mumbled something and handed me $7 and closed the window.’’
    Knowing he’d been taken, Reinhardt told the ship’s steward, who knocked on the attendant’s window. After telling him he owed Reinhardt another $3, the attendant tried to shut the window on the steward’s hand. But the steward was able to grab $3 before it happened.
    “He then said to me, ‘Son, you better learn English as fast as you can,’’ Reinhardt said. “What the students experienced here today is much the same.’"
    Nellie Colarocco, who also portrayed a registrar at the reenactment, said the experience also dredged up some painful memories for her.Ellis Island was closed when she and her parents immigrated from Rotterdam in the Netherlands when she was 10 and they arrived in New York City after a week aboard a ship. They planned to go to Newark to live with relatives.
    “My parents were inspired by the site of the Statue of Liberty, but I didn’t really understand,’’ she said. “I didn’t know what lay ahead. I felt bewildered, uprooted and because I couldn’t speak a word of English, I was overwhelmed.’’
    She said looking into the faces of the fifth graders, who realistically portrayed immigrants in both costume, character and language barriers also made her remember how difficult it was to leave her grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends and her life in a large city.
    “It brought up a feeling I had as a child of being lost and isolated,’’ Colarocco said.
    This unusual vehicle for learning - the marriage of social studies, language arts and theatre to produce an authentic learning experience about what it was like to be an immigrant - was the brainchild of district Enrichment and Arts In Education coordinator Bobbi Clifford.
    For the second year in a row, Clifford obtained a grant to make the project a reality and allowed her to retain theatre artist Arthur Brown, affiliated with Young Audiences of Rochester, to work with the 200 fifth graders. He worked with them during five previous session before the Ellis Island reenactment so they could learn about the joys, as well as the trials and tribulations experienced by immigrants as they prepared to leave their homelands and come to the United States.
    Their experiences at the Great Hall in Ellis Island, where they were processed, was also intended to demonstrate the hardships they encountered after they arrived in America were only the beginning of the difficulties that lay ahead.
    In addition to the work with Brown, Clifford said the preparatory work for students done by teachers also added a critical dimension to the realism of the project.
    “I think it was outstanding learning experience for these kids and brought everything off the pages of their research books and made it real,’’ Kathryn Marshall, a Kelley fifth grade teacher said. “We really worked on making this a realistic event in which students would use all of their five senses to experience and they did. They loved it. They liked the opportunity to dress up and role play. It was so memorable for them.’’
    “This exercise is one these children will never forget,’’ Clifford added. “When you integrate the arts with academics, powerful things happen and the children will always remember what they learned.’’
    Many of the volunteers actors - who also included Burt Ford, Elly Dawson, Gus Dawson, Hanalora Reinhardt, Richard Austin, Dave Tyler, Sue Kline, Peg and Mike Pelletier, the Rev. Dan and Edith Benedict, Donna Buck, Mary Jane Healy, Susie Earl, Angela Fera, Gary Ver Straete, Jay Warren, Christine McGinty, Jim O’Neill and Heidi Dodd - agreed.
    “This is tremendous experience for these students that will help them know what it must have been like to come to Ellis Island,’’ said Dan Benedict, who along with his wife portrayed passport inspectors. “It makes me glad I was born here.’’
    “I can’t get over who much the children are remaining in character,’’ remarked Earl, who along with Healy and Fera portrayed Ellis Island nurses. “I’ve never seen anything like this in education.’’
    Brown, who has worked on other immigrant study units in other school districts, raved about how effectively the volunteer actors played their roles.
    “They were absolutely wonderful. They took their roles seriously and the kids took them seriously,’’ he said.
    Principal Chris Mizro agreed.
    “The volunteers willingness to do this - and do it so well - is commendable and contributed to one of the most authentic learning experiences I’ve witnessed in my career,’’ she said.