French club sends letters to their pen pals
Greetings, cultures and stories shared across the world
While no letters have been received back, a small backpack and lanyard from the school store ‘The Pride,’ have been sent. A Christmas ornament along with the ‘ugly sweater’ is planning to be sent.
December 8, 2015
After the central school authority in Lille France asked to form partnerships with Austin ISD and Leander ISD schools last fall, along with several months of back and forth communication between teachers, french students taught by ‘Madame’ Eden Davis have gained the opportunity to communicate with kids 5,177 miles away in Lille. Other schools in the district such as Rouse, Vista Ridge and Vandegrift, have participated along with the four upper level English classes in Lille.
“[The letters] are informal, student to student,” Davis said. “They do not have addresses or other personal contact information, and they will evolve into more familiar things, but they will always be class to class. While students were initially very positive about the possibility to exchanging letters with French pen pals, I was only able to send 26 letters.”
The French program has been growing exponentially as of late with the majority French 1 classes filled and packed with excited new students as described by Mrs.Davis. The classes who sent letters range from French 2/Pre-AP, French 3 Pre-AP/Pre-IB and French 4 AP/IB and have shared similar responses.
“I was excited,” junior Emilie Scanlon said. “Since I was little I always wanted to do a pen-pal especially with kids in French. France was always my favourite country and I really like being able to communicate with people my age from that country and learn a little bit more about their culture. ”
Along with sending letters, the French 3 classes have made a video edited by sophomore French 2 student Summer Gerhart that will physically map-out and label the school for the students in Lille and soon to send an ugly christmas sweater picture from the french program together to send as well.
“I think most kids were really happy about doing it,” Davis said. “I think it’s a wonderful idea and [the video editing] is a really hard thing to do and it takes a tremendous amount of time. I would hope they will send us back letters which I think works well. A basic paper, pen-pal letter is great practice writing wise and it seems like it’s more personal than an electronic communication of some kind.”
