School Features

The Pen Pal Club at Voyager Middle School is watching the mail.

Last week, the club sent their first letters to students in Moscow. Inside a large envelope were 17 small envelopes with letters and Washington state post cards addressed to each of their Russian pen pals.

While waiting for a response from Russia, the club is writing letters to Mrs. Baker’s fifth-grade class at Odyssey Elementary. Students in the club are also searching for possible pen pals in New Jersey and Vietnam.

“Basically they like writing,” club advisor Benayshe-Ba-Equay Titus said. “They like writing while they’re at school and then they want to write after school.”

Every Thursday at 3 p.m., seven students in seventh grade – all girls – meet to chat and write letters to their pen pals for an hour.

The Pen Pal Club is new to Voyager, starting up in March after seventh grader Polina Eremenko approached Titus with an outline for a new club. Eremenko’s friend Katia had suggested that students at her school and at Voyager be pen pals because the Russian school has an English-writing program.

“This is a chance for them to practice writing English to American friends,” Eremenko said. “Some of us in the club asked if they could just do e-mail, but it’s much more special when you get it by hand.”

Polina Eremenko, right, a seventh grader at Voyager Middle School, assigns pen pals from Mrs. Baker’s fifth-grade class at Odyssey Middle School to students in Voyager’s Pen Pal Club. Seventh grader Vanessa Mach, left, starts a letter to her Odyssey pen pal

Because there are only seven in the club, the students are pen pals to several students at the Russian school and at Odyssey. Eremenko has the most with eight pen pals, including her friend Katia.

Seventh grader Loryn Crowell joined the club because she’d written to a family in Indiana in the past and wanted to try being a pen pal again. She said it’s cool that the club is writing to pen pals inside and outside the United States.

“I like writing and talking to people in other countries because I’ve never actually left the United States in [my] 12 years and I really want to,” she said. “So even if I can just get a contact outside of the U.S., that’s still really cool.”

Seventh grader Loryn Crowell writes a letter to one of her pen pals in Mrs. Baker’s fifth-grade class at Odyssey Elementary

In their first letters to their Russian pen pals, the students introduced themselves, told them about the weather in Everett, their likes and dislikes, and their hobbies.

“I asked what they like and I want to know what kind of music they’re in to and what kind of clothes they’re in to,” seventh grader Vanessa Mach said. “I want to talk about stuff that I don’t know about, so I can learn more about their language and their culture.”

Seventh grader Gwen Schneider likes the Pen Pal Club because she gets to make new friends with students in the club and with her pen pals. She said she wants to know how their lives in the United States are different compared to those living in Russia.

“I’m looking forward to [learning] what they eat because we have a lot of fast food here and I want to know how they survive without a lot of fast food,” she said.

Seventh grader Gwen Schneider writes a letter to one of her pen pals in Mrs. Baker’s fifth-grade class at Odyssey Elementary

When the club gets their response letters from Moscow sometime in April or May, they’ll get to writing their second letters – and this time enclose photos of themselves.

Since the students are writing letters to classrooms in Russia and at Odyssey, Titus is writing to the teachers. She’s crossing her fingers that the Russian teacher will invite her for a visit someday.

Titus said she likes how the Pen Pal Club gives students in middle school – with completely different styles and personalities – the opportunity to meet and become friends.

“When they’re trying to brainstorm and figure out things to write, they’re getting to know about each other and sharing about their lives and then end up writing about that stuff in the letters,” she said.

She also likes that the students in the club are interested in learning the art of letter writing.

“Just knowing that students really do want to still write after school, it’s exciting and inspiring for me,” Titus said. “This could possibly lead to other clubs that have to do with writing.”