Experiment in international relations, Part 1

    A year or so ago, I accepted an invitation from an elementary teacher I know in Rhinelander to visit her classroom and talk about Africa.  To my surprise, the kids actually seemed interested and had loads of questions.  That experience encouraged me to attempt something new, and with Shari (my teacher friend) I began a new "project."  This is how it went:
     I went to visit Shari's class at the Northwoods Elementary Charter School and talked to them about my upcoming trip to Rwanda.  We looked at the website for the school I was to visit and talked about what it might be like there.  Then, after I went home, the kids all wrote letters to "Dear Friend" at the school in Rwanda, and attached photographs of themselves to each letter.  I was surprised at how enthusiastic the Rhinelander kids were about this project--they REALLY got into the spirit of the thing.
     A few days before I left for Africa, Shari gave me a big envelope of letters from her students.  Some had drawings.  Some asked questions.  Some even made up some math problems for the kids in Rwanda to work on.  Well, my doubts about the enthusiasm of the kids in RHINELANDER were resolved, but I still had doubts about how enthusiastic the kids in RWANDA would be.  I knew most of the kids in Rwanda would be older than the 4th graders here, that the Rwandans would all be boys, and that they lived literally a world away from the kids here.  
     So I carried the letters from Shari's class there and from the first time I took the first one out of the envelope, they were a HUGE success!  The faculty in Rwanda was fascinated, and the kids were astounded.  I was pretty sure that none of them had ever received a letter before, much less from America.  For some reason, kids in Rwanda were mesmerized by the thought of America, and virtually every young person I met told me "It is my dream to go to America.  America is a very good country."  They seemed to have the idea that every day in the U.S. is like a permanent free pass to DisneyWorld, and while I tried to tell them that life in the U.S. could be hard, they remained unconvinced  . . . . and not surprisingly so, I guess.
 

     My job in this enterprise was to help the boys, first of all, READ the letters from the kids in Rhinelander.  Some of the letters WERE a little hard to read.  Some of the concepts were a little hard to understand . . . snowmen, for example, were quite baffling. 
     Then we talked about what to write back, what the kids in Rhinelander might be interested to know about THEM.  Then the boys had to labor mightily at writing the letters (it's hard, I know; I haven't done it in years)
     Then I would read their letters and make
suggestions about spelling, punctuation, and 
sometimes even content.

Here are the letter writers hard at work.  Word spread throughout the school, and soon I had more writers than letters, so I started re-using the Rhinelander letters.  Even one of the teachers was so fascinated that HE wrote a letter on behalf of his three-year-old daughter.  I wound up with quite a stash to take home!