By Lisa Seddon
The New Westminster school district is small, in terms of geographical boundaries – just 15.5 square kilometres. Within those boundaries are 7,500 students educated in ten elementary schools (K-5), three middle schools (6-8), and one secondary school (9-12). The lone secondary school, New Westminster Secondary, is currently home to roughly 2,400 students, which can be quite intimidating when our middle school students walk in its doors in September of their Grade 9 year. Many of them have never met one of their peers from the other middle schools before they go to the secondary school.The New Westminster middle school teacher-librarians wanted to help alleviate that.
On our professional development day in April 2024, Victoria Yung, the teacher-librarian at Ecole Glenbrook Middle School, proposed creating a pen pal program with the Grade 8 students. The other teacher-librarians – Jenni Yang and Ivy Wu of Fraser River Middle School, and Lisa Seddon of Queensborough Middle School – readily agreed, along with Brenda Kwok, the district library coordinator.
In April, we laid out some rough parameters for the program: letters were meant to be handwritten, unless there were specific students that needed an accommodation; students would use a pseudonym, primarily to minimize the chances of cyberbullying via social media; students would fill out a brief survey so we could match students with someone of similar interests; letters would be part of the English Language Arts classes; and we would organize a gathering where pen pals could meet in person near the end of the school year; letters would be sent to the other schools via interoffice mail. We assigned each school a colour in order to make sorting the letters easier. We also presented the idea to our administrators and in the case of Lisa, to the grade-level leads at one of their bimonthly meetings. We met again on the professional development day in May to create the survey and share the level of enthusiasm from our respective schools. We set a deadline for the survey and arranged to meet at the end of September to pair students.
When school began in September, we went to the Grade 8 classes to introduce the pen pal project and answer student questions. They were excited, and understandably nervous. They understood the appeal of using a pseudonym and agreed with the rationale behind it.
The survey asked a few basic questions: favourite television shows or movies; if they played sports and, if so, which ones; favourite books, favourite food, three words to describe themselves; and most importantly their alias. If students did not choose an alias the teacher-librarians would choose one for them. We also asked if there were special considerations, such as getting paired with a pen pal of the same gender, or someone who is 2SLGBTQIA friendly. All of this information was loaded into an Excel file where Victoria, Jenni, Ivy, and Lisa painstakingly sorted through more than 500 students and paired them with a student from another middle school. We paired the Queensborough students first, because it has about 100 Grade 8s, while Fraser River and Glenbrook each have over 200 students. This way, we were able to divide the Queensborough students among Glenbrook and Fraser River as evenly as possible, then Fraser River and Glenbrook could match their remaining students.
We set a date to send the first introductory letter, and provided some letter topic ideas. We also used conversation cubes to help prompt students who struggled to come up with anything to say about themselves. Student engagement has been positive, with a few rare exceptions. The students who do participate are eager to receive their next letter. We have scheduled a day for the pen pals to meet each other at the end of May. Students will wear a name tag with their alias and they will have to try and find their pen pal. We have also encouraged students to bring a final letter, sticker, or other small item to exchange.
In order to lessen the environmental impact of using paper envelopes, we decided to use zippered pencil pouches as our envelopes. They can easily be reused for the next school year’s pen pals. We also made a name tag for each envelope, labelled with the To/From students’ aliases, and added a coloured dot next to their names that corresponded with their school so it was easier to sort them into the appropriate bins. Name tags can be covered with a bit of packing tape to cover the names to keep them from fading. Each school received two plastic bins, one for each recipient school, which were sent back and forth between the schools.
As the first year of this project comes to a close, the New Westminster middle school teacher-librarians have some ideas to help this process proceed in a much smoother fashion. First, we might use a random sorter to help us pair students. We still intend to have them complete the survey, so we can ensure that students are not matched with someone that might be a poor fit for them. We will also have a set schedule of when letters need to go into interoffice mail, so that everyone receives a letter at approximately the same time. This will also help teachers arrange letter writing around term reporting deadlines. In schools with scheduled library blocks, like Queensborough, Grade 8 classes can use the library block to write their letters, freeing up scheduled ELA time in the classrooms. The TLs and classroom teachers can collaborate to create a rubric that teachers can use to assess student letters and the process they used to write them.
Materials used:
- Zippered pencil pouches for reusable envelopes
- Plastic bins to transport the letters between the schools
- Two per school
- To/From tags
- Blank address labels
- Coloured dot stickers for the name tags
British Columbia Grade 8 English Language Arts Curriculum Standards:
- Core Competencies
- Communication
- Connecting and engaging with others
- Focusing on intent and purpose
- Acquiring and presenting information
- Thinking
- Creative Thinking
- Generating and incubating
- Evaluating and developing
- Critical Thinking
- Reflecting and assessing
- Creative Thinking
- Personal and Social
- Positive Personal and Cultural Identity
- Recognizing personal values and choices
- Identifying strengths and weaknesses
- Social Awareness and Responsibility
- Building relationships
- Valuing diversity
- Positive Personal and Cultural Identity
- Communication
- Big Ideas
- Language and text can be a source of creativity and joy
- Exploring stories and other texts helps us understand ourselves and make connections to others and the world
- Curricular Competency
- Comprehend and connect
- Recognize and appreciate how different features, forms, and genres of texts reflect different purposes, audiences, and messages
- Recognize how language constructs personal, social, and cultural identity
- Construct meaningful personal connections between self, text, and world
- Respond to text in personal, creative, and critical ways
- Create and communicate
- Exchange ideas and viewpoints to build shared understanding and extend thinking
- Use a writing and design process to plan, develop, and create engaging and meaningful literary and informational texts for a variety of purposes and audiences
- Assess and refine texts to improve their clarity, effectiveness, and impact according to purpose, audience, and message
- Use an increasing repertoire of conventions of Canadian spelling, grammar, and punctuation
- Transform ideas and information to create original texts
- Comprehend and connect
Canadian School Libraries Leading Learning Standards of Practice:
- Facilitating collaborative engagement to cultivate and empower a community of learners
- Fostering literacies to empower life-long learners
- Designing learning environments to support participatory learning
Lisa Seddon is a teacher-librarian at Queensborough Middle School and New Westminster Secondary School in New Westminster. Prior to becoming a teacher-librarian, she taught drama and social studies in Virginia and Texas. Lisa has served on the executive committee of the BC Teacher-Librarians Association since 2019, and is the current vice-president. Lisa is the 2024 BC Teacher-Librarian of the Year.