Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/108811
Booth (left) and Evans. A tale of friendship Leah Stewart and Andjela Rich read letters from France as Katie Hansen looks on. ���My students have been salivating all day, waiting for this moment,��� laughs Pechan, a member of the Pacific Grove Teachers Association (PGTA) in Monterey County. ���It���s like a Christmas present.��� In an era of texts, e-mails and social networking, teachers are pleased that students love receiving old-fashioned letters from pen pals. Perhaps it���s the anticipation of waiting for letters to arrive via snail mail and the human connection that only personal letters can foster. In the initial letters, American children ask their pen pals a very important question. ���Will you be my friend?��� ���Yes, we will be your friend,��� the French children reply. Students write about pets, sports, families, video games, music and favorite subjects in school. They don���t realize they are working on assignments that correlate with state standards. The youngsters take their time and write carefully. They are reminded that as Robert H. Down Elementary School students they represent American students, so they do their best work. ���Having a pen pal changed my life,��� says Michelle Evans, a first-grade teacher at H. Down Elementary School and fellow PGTA member. She was just 14 when a teacher asked her to correspond with a girl the same age from England. They two wrote back and forth, finding common interests and a deep admiration for Princess Diana. ���Sometimes it took months for a letter to arrive and it seemed like forever,��� recalls Evans. ���But we wrote to each other for years. Many of the struggles I went through in high school socially were things she also experienced. We reached out to each other and it helped us both grow.��� When Caroline Booth invited Evans to her wedding, she jumped on a plane. The two met at the airport for the first time, holding pictures of each other, crying. Since then, their families visit back and forth; they still cry during goodbyes. ���These days it is mostly Facebook, e-mail and Skype. It���s more rushed. But there was something special about those letters. There was the anticipation of waiting and pages and pages of letters that helped you get to know someone in a way that���s more intimate than phone calls or e-mail.��� Her students will soon correspond with students from England. Who helped her set up the pen pal program? The daughter of her childhood pen pal, Caroline Booth. ���Having a pen pal can change your life, and I hope it changes the lives of my students.��� Letters foster skills, understanding A fun way to improve writing, penmanship, spelling, and reading, pen pals help students practice or learn a new language. Pen pals can be linked to social studies and geography. For example, February 2013 www.cta.org 31