Students put pen to paper

Penpal program pares BMS with NJ students

BELLEVILLE -- In our email and text-driven world, many kids these days have never written a letter by hand before.

Belleville Mennonite School teacher Hattie Doggett is helping her third-graders empower themselves by putting pen to paper by participating in a pen pal program with another elementary school in New Jersey.

Doggett hopes this project inspires her students to continue to write letters for the rest of their lives.

"The third-graders were excited, and super curious," explained Doggett, who used to teach at Faith Christian Academy in Hamilton Square, N.J., which is the school she contacted about pairing up as pen pals. This marks the second year of the project between the two schools.

"Each year in September, I have reached out to this school asking if the third-grade teacher would like to be pen pals with us," she added. "This year, the teacher waited until Christmas break to let me know that she and the students were ready to start pen palling."

Doggett's class couldn't have been more excited to receive and read their first batch of letters from their New Jersey pen pals on Wednesday afternoon. "We each opened them and read them out loud to each other," Doggett said.

"This morning, we responded with our first draft," she added. "I will look over each student's rough draft - or first draft - looking at grammar and sentence structure, especially capitals and periods, question marks and exclamation points."

Doggett's students are still learning about grammar and punctuation, so realizes this is also a learning experience, too. She wants them to reply with a polished reply.

"They will rewrite the letter in their best handwriting, and we will send it out to them," Doggett said. That's right hand-written replies - no typing, no texting and no emailing.

The letters the class received came in a big manilla envelope with individually addressed letters inside to each of the third-grade students. The pen pal was listed on the outside of the envelope.

"I was ecstatic to share the wonderful news with them," said Doggett, who had a pen pal when she was in school. "I had hoped that we could have been pen pals since the beginning of the year, but unfortunately it did not work out like that."

She appreciates the other staff and students at the New Jersey school taking the time to participate in the program.

After she and her students read the letters, they found a few students at Faith Christian shared the same names as their counterparts at Belleville Mennonite counterparts; many of the students had similar likes such as the same colors, cursive writing, favorite food, same sports, some asked if they believed in Jesus and are a Christian.

"I am glad that this new teacher in third grade was able to find the time to have her class write back," Doggett said. "The students here at BMS were totally surprised, and super excited when I shared with them that they were going to have a pen pal in another state."

Some of the students received two pen pals because the third-grade class in New Jersey has 24 students, while Belleville Mennonite only has 16 students.

Doggett hopes to pack up the replies and mail out the letters next week. She and students will then anxiously and agonizingly wait for the mail carrier to deliver the replies from their pen pals.