The Atlantic: The Risks and Rewards of Student-Exchange Programs
In her first letter to Jazmine, a 10th-grader at Amundsen High School in Chicago, Vanessa shares her nickname (“Vane”), says she loves animals, and briskly mentions that her father passed away.
“I hope you and I have a lot in common,” she tells her new pen pal. “At first, I didn’t want new friends because I’m scared of talking to people. I hope I get to know you better.”
The correspondence between Jazmine and Vanessa, an eighth-grader at Emiliano Zapata Academy, is one of over 25 exchanges between students at these schools documented inP.S. You Sound Like Someone I Can Trust, a book published this past summer by the nonprofit writing and tutoring center, 826CHI. To create the book, which is dominated by the students’ letters and merely contextualized by the perspectives of adult facilitators, 826CHI and classroom teachers matched pen pals by interest, sparked the letter-writing process with specific prompts, and offered extensive editing assistance.