Old days of making pen pals back in a Kolkata school

Kolkata, April 1

Putting aside emails, Twitter and Facebook, students of a school here are making pen pals in the US through the old-fashioned postal mail.

The idea hit youngster Alexander Levine while teaching students at Kolkata's Silver Point School on how to write letters and communicate effectively.

To make classwork a fun activity, he asked students of standard six, seven and eight to write and post letters to one of his friends living in New Hampshire.

For the students, Jarde, a few years elder to them, was a complete stranger. They began by introducing themselves to him and soon took over the role of agents of cultural exchange as they began to discuss about Kolkata's famous Durga Puja to their new-found friend.

"It taught them how to start from scratch while explaining something which is completely unknown to someone else. For these students, Durga Puja is integral to their lives but someone in another country might not have even heard of it," Levin told PTI while explaining how the art of making pen pals has become a teaching aid for him in the classroom.

It not only helped students with language practise but also promoted cultural exchange.

An English teaching assistant under Fulbright-Nehru Program of United States-India Educational Foundation (USIEF), he says the students were thrilled to receive a reply in a postal letter.

"I could have simply given them the task of writing a letter which would have never got posted to anyone. But I decided to make it a real letter writing exercise. This arouses the interest of  students and increases their learning. They also make friends like this," he said.

The school's co-ordinating teacher Ratna C Roy praised Levin's efforts saying his nine-month stay in the school under the USIEF programme was like a whiff of fresh air for both the teachers and students.

Jarde shot a video of his reading the letters, which were posted from the Rashbehari post office in Kolkata, and then posting the reply in a post box in New Hampshire.

"You need to write - whether it is letters or emails or posting messages on social media. You need to learn how to communicate. Writing letters by hand is fun for the students," Levin, who is only 22 years old, said.

In the age of emails and social media, almost all of these students were active in communicating online but none had written a real letter and posted it to anyone before.

He has now advised his students to keep making pen pals in different cities and countries using the good old snail mail.

"I have given them my postal address so that they can keep writing to me once I am back home in the US," Levin said. PTI