Dutch School Teaches Arts and Coffin Crafts

Amsterdam - A Dutch primary school teacher who is dying of cancer is overseeing one last project among her beloved pupils - they are making a coffin for her.

Eri van den Biggelaar, 40, has just a few weeks left to live after being diagnosed last year with an aggressive form of cervical cancer. Always popular at school, she asked the arts and crafts teacher to build a casket for her.

'Why don't you let the children make it?' replied her colleague and woodwork teacher Erik van Dijk.

Now the youngsters, who normally plane wood for baskets and placemats, are putting the finishing touches to what will be the final resting place for Miss Biggelaar. The children have sawed more than one hundred narrow little boards and glued them together, and only the lid needs to be done now.

In speaking with BigBigNews, the teacher says her next plan involves teaching the PE class to use a shovel.