Inner City USA students seek Inner City penpals abroad

[demanovka]

Dear Fellow Teachers,

I’m writing to express interest in a penpal exchange. I used to live in Europe, and would love to expose my students to European (or any foreign) culture and life through a penpal. Most of them have never traveled far from their home city, let alone abroad.

This autumn, after several years of teaching ESL in Central Europe, I will begin teaching English (British & American literature) to 14- & 15-year-olds in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. It's a city of about 500,000, near Washington DC.

The school is in a poorer part of town, and the majority of students are African-American (which I mention only because I am hoping to avoid any racism from the penpals—I want to make sure everyone is “cool” with an interracial exchange).

My high school is a technical (not academic) high school, so only about 50% of the students go on to university. The rest enter careers in carpentry, computer programming, cosmetology, culinary arts, graphic design, and other fields.

The main purpose of the penpal program would be to motivate my students to write for FUN!! I am also hoping to have my students write a report on their penpal’s home country and city, with photos and pictures.

At the end of the semester, I’d like to do an International Poetry Journal, with the poetry of my students and their penpals. I am open to suggestions on other collaborative projects.

I doubt that email will be possible. The exchange most likely will have to be via regular postal mail.

I will have 3 to 6 classes of 25-35 students each, and would like each class to correspond with students from a different country.

Please email me if you are interested!

Thanks very much!

Best Wishes / Vsetko Najlepsie,

Amy
[email protected]

[Valentin]

Hi,
Here is a a language exchange website where you can find a lot of penpals and everybody there is willing to learn languages and help each others. www.sharedtalk.com
Val