Secret pen pals build relationships without judgement
Information from Hope Speak, a network for the teachings of foreign languages, states, “Many people believe that the significance of communication is like the importance of breathing. Indeed, communication facilitates the spread of knowledge and forms relationships between people.”
One effective solution to solving the anti-social epidemic is for students to become pen pals with another student within the school environment. This would force students with social anxiety to engage in conversations with proper letter formatting, a mandatory skill required for multitudes of future careers.
According to ThoughtCo, engaging in pen pal activities can teach students “valuable practice at writing letters in the proper format.”
This experience also forces students to only judge recipients by their character.
“Our expectations of others are triggered by not only how they look but how they present themselves overall (what clothes they're wearing, whether they're clean-shaven, their accent, and so on),” says psychologist Alex Lickerman.
The pen-pal procedure would be implemented in the classroom by having students undergo a stage name and having teachers assign two students together. At the beginning of the school year, each student will be given the disguise name of the student in which he/she will be writing letters to.
Every week, each pair will write back and forth to each other and place the letters in an assigned folder. Besides proper formatting, the only requirement for students is that they do not give away their name. At the end of the school year, the students will reveal the name in which they took disguise in.
Pen pals in the classroom has been implemented in enough classrooms to prove the true benefits. Teacher Lisa Mims from Edutopia states, “My students know that not only is someone actually going to read their letter, but also respond to it. This encourages students to write with meaning, to write with a sense of purpose. As the year progresses, there is always a vast improvement in their writing.”
Out of 47 students who completed a survey asking for their interest in having a secret pen pal, 34 answered “yes”.
In conclusion, secret pen pals in the classroom helps students develop communication and writing skills. Hence, this practice should be implemented in the classroom.
