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BUCHANAN, N.Y. Students at Buchanan-Verplanck Elementary School began writing letters to soldiers in Afghanistan at the end of the 2010-2011 school year, mailing out the stack of envelopes in June. When return letters hadnt arrived by September, few expected the project to culminate half a year later with a visit from a U.S. Navy captain in February.
It is writing, its pointed writing, but its outside of our curriculum in a sense and it takes a lot of time, said Sarakay Eyring, a fourth-grade teacher in 2010 who moved into fifth-grade with her class in 2011. Its not just writing something for your teacher, its writing something to someone whos going to write back to you, she said.
Eyring co-teaches a mixed group special education and general education students with Catherine Holzman. Together the teachers developed a program to send letters to American soldiers in Afghanistan. The project began by asking parents if they had relatives or friends in Afghanistan and if they could use the contact information to write letters.
Letters were mailed to a family friend of one of the students in the fourth-grade class, Navy veteran Capt. Robert Yarrish. The class received responses from Yarrishs medical unit in December. The letters provided teachers with connections from reading and writing lessons to the geography of Kandahar Province, to the difficulties of fighting and being far from family.
We had only sent it to a medical unit, so we were able to pull out a map and say, This is where it is, this is where they are. So they had a sense of how far away these people were from home, things that were just amazing learning connections for them, said Eyring.
Eyring said she felt a sense of pride that her co-teacher was willing to take on such projects when, every minute of every day teaching is consumed by a highly regimented curriculum. You have to have a lot of bravery to take the time away from the other things were doing, she said.
Yarrish came into the classroom in February, in dress uniform with medallions and medals and a presentation that showed him getting ready in basic training to his time in Afghanistan.
The program is continuing and students wrote a second round of letters, some aimed at soldiers with whom they previously corresponded, others writing cold Dear Soldier letters, and some students wrote to a particular medical unit. As the soldiers return home, some students stayed in contact with them via email, those who live in the area have given them home addresses to write to.
The impact you have on students is much more of a long term impact. You look back on it 5,000 times, is this the type of person you want to be, or is this the type of person? That is certainly supported by teaching the reading, writing, math social studies skills you have to teach them, but the whole child is the part were trying to move forward, said Eyring.
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