The 6th grade class at Palo Community School has been participating in a pen pal exchange with the Mohomou Refugee School since March of 2003. I first discovered RESPECT when I began taking an online class through iEaRN. Marc Schaeffer wrote to me in the teachers forum and told me about RESPECT, and asked if I was interested in my students having pen pals from a refugee school. We had already been studying hunger issues in developing countries (my social studies curriculum covers africa, asia, and australia), so we expanded it to do more study of refugee issues. We ordered materials from UNHCR, which we used in our classroom, and Marc sent us 23 letters from refugee students in Guinea, West africa. I read the first batch of letters aloud to my students and let them choose the one they wanted to write to.
My students were pretty excited about writing to their pen pals the first time, but it was after they received a personal response from their own pen pal that they became very excited. The day the second packet of letters with photos came from Mohomou School, I passed them out right after lunch so they could read them and share. My students were really touched by the letters from their pen pals. They couldn't believe the troubles and sorrow their pen pals had experienced in their short lives. One of my students said, "Mrs. Huynh, he says the day he received my letter was the happiest day of his life!" To think that they had the power to make a difference in someone's life was an eye-opening experience for them. They couldn't wait to write back to their pen pals, and there was much discussion about what they could do for our new friends. <<more>>
