Pen pals may seem like a thing of the past, but OU alumni in Teach for America are giving it a new face, literally, with Skype.
The Sooner Pen Pal Program, launched in early September, allows international students at OU to teach low-income elementary and junior high students about world cultures through letters and video chats.
“There is a unique ‘tangibility’ that comes with programs like Skype, that will add to the relationship between the American students and their international pen pals,” said Brooke Hammer, OU International Programs Adviser. “It is one thing to open a letter, but to be able to see these students and incorporate what they have been learning about the world and history into their exchange in a very personal way is a rare opportunity.”
Cherrie Warden, an OU international area studies alumna and Teach for America teacher in inner-city Los Angeles, explained how her classroom will be paired with a different pen pal for each unit of study. When students study Asia, they will have an Asian pen pal.
“It’s great for the kids because they don’t have connections to other ethnicities and cultures outside of their neighborhood,” Warden said. “They’re getting to speak with a person born and raised in every area that we study.”
The pen pals plan to hold onto tradition and continue to write letters with a pen and pad, as well. OU alumni working for the non-profit program Teach for America will have their classrooms write letters to nine of OU’s international students.
Over the course of the program, each international student will receive 107 letters from young American students. The international students will reply once, and copies of their letters will be handed out to the young pen pals.
Aldo Jimenez Felipe, an architecture student from Spain, is currently corresponding with a class of seven four-year-old girls. To help them learn to read and write, the girls will read Jimenez’s letters and write back. In his first letter, Felipe wants to teach his Pen Pals about Spanish language and culture.
“I will be able to be part of their learning process and teach them about my country,” Felipe said. Maybe one day, they could travel to Spain to study as I have done traveling to the United States and they could be pen pals there in Spain.”
The participating international students are from France, Spain, Columbia, South Korea, Italy, Turkey, and China. They will correspond with students in California, Oklahoma and Tennessee.
The Oklahoma Daily is pleased to provide you the opportunity to share your thoughts about this article. We encourage lively debate on the issues of the day, but we ask you refrain from using profanity or other offensive speech, engaging in personal attacks or name-calling, posting advertising, or straying from the topic at hand. To comment, you must be a registered user of OUDaily.com. Thanks for taking the time to offer your thoughts.
You must be logged in to leave a comment. Log in | Register
Steven Zoeller 1 year, 7 months ago
This headline made made me cringe. Really, just technology? Not 'modern' technology or 'emerging' or 'popular' technology?
soonerboomers 1 year, 7 months ago
Any article about Teach for America which fails to mention how pointless and ineffective it is has failed to do its job.