Bonjour! 

     Je m’appelle Maddie! J’ai 17 ans. J’habite à Lansdale Pennsylvanie…

Stamped on a postcard and shipped back and forth, North Penn French students start letters similar to those above, sending them to their pen pals. While this may seem like a common act, letters and pen pals have fallen through the cracks with the rise of technology and are very rare, especially in the younger generations. 

“I did [pen pals] when I was a senior in AP French,” North Penn French teacher, Eileen Burner said. “I felt like it made learning a language real, and not just something on paper that I was studying. It definitely made me more motivated to learn and it was a lot of fun in general. We actually wound up going and visiting our pen pals for two weeks which is what I hope to do in the future, obviously, that won’t work out for this school year, but I am hoping in the next couple of years we can get that going.”

This initiative has been a long time coming, but with the addition of Madame Burner this past year, such a tall feat was made much easier. 

“I taught in France last year, so I contacted the English teachers from the high school I was at and they contacted more. They said that all of their sophomores would [exchange letters] with us which was perfect,” Burner stated.“They are practicing their English, so they are writing to us in English and we are practicing our French, so we are writing back to them in French.”

In order to make this the best it could be, Burner read through each and every one of the letters to ensure the pairs had something in common with their pen pal.

“We do handwritten letters because I have to read what goes in and out just to make sure there is nothing inappropriate, but also so I could initially pair the students. They gave the students a little prompt so they told us about them, their family, their favorite foods, and places to go. I read through all 250 of them and tried to pair people up with someone who at least had one thing in common with them. It worked pretty well. And we obviously had extras because they sent way too many, so some people were able to pick a second one if they wanted,” Burner said. 

For years, students have been immersed in textbook curricula with the same peers around them. Sending letters to counterparts in a different country opens new avenues to meeting new people while also working on critical language learning skills. 

“I wanted it to be fun, but also to have a purpose in practicing the skills that we have worked on thus far so I did a couple of different grammar points for each [French level] depending on what we’ve worked on so far this year. Everybody gave their name, age, and grade, and then talked about at least five topics such as their family, clothes, or foods to name a few,” Burner explained. “So for French 2, there were fewer topics available because they only completed French 1 and half of French 2, but if you were AP, you could pretty much talk about any topic. And then they had to make it creative so put a picture or drawing of themself or their dog or something [along those lines].”

“We are all writing them together and they are going to hand it to me, and we are going to send them all off in one package to the school in France. It was supposed to start way earlier in the year, but it took forever for their first letters to get here, it took like a month, but usually it takes two weeks,” Burner continued. “We are going to send ours and it should get there in two weeks, they will get back to us, and then I’m hoping we can write to them one or two more times after that.”

In a world that is heavily reliant on technology, handwritten letters, like those these students are writing open pathways for a different skill set to be developed. Not only that, but these letters added a new level of excitement for the students coming into class. 

“I definitely feel that ever since I gave them out, the students are a little more interested in coming to class and talking about their pen pals. In AP, a huge part of the test is writing an email so this gets them ready to practice for that as well. And if you are ever going to use your French in life, you will have to write emails or letters, so I feel like it is more applicable.”

Although the pen pals are technically a school assignment, Burner hopes that the students will take it way beyond the four walls of North Penn High School, and stay in contact with their French counterparts like she once did. 

“They were allowed to give them their social media and stuff so hopefully in the future, the students will stay in contact with [their penpals]. I am still in contact with mine from high school. She lives in Canada now, so I see her sometimes,” Burner said.