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Mapping the World Teacher's Letter December 15, 2000 Dear Colleague, My name is Tina Nilsen-Hodges, and I am the Upper Elementary Lead Teacher at The Susquehanna School in Binghamton, a small city in the state of New York on the northeast coast of the United States of America. I apologize for the lateness of my letter. I received your name and address six weeks ago, but illness, student assessments, and several major school events have slowed me down. My students have been busy writing and revising their letters for over
a week now, as they grapple with how to communicate about things that
are very familiar to them in ways that someone who may be unfamiliar
with them will understand. It was also very interesting to work with
them on writing a letter as a group to you and your class, We have begun learning about Ghanaian culture through stories and photos provided by the National Gardening Association, as well as from books we've borrowed from our local public library. We would like to send information and photographs about life in the United States to your class along with letters to individual students. To start, I have enclosed are some drawings and explanations that the children did about winter holidays that they celebrate. Given our common interest in agriculture and gardening, you may want to tell your students that the Christmas trees that the children have drawn are grown by local tree farmers, not harvested from the wild. Many families (like mine) have made it a tradition to visit a tree farm to harvest their own tree every year. We choose a tree and cut it down ourselves. Some families purchase artificial trees made of plastic and metal, which are used year after year. My students are very interested in receiving photographs of you, your students, and your school. In case it is not too much to ask, I am enclosing a one-use camera loaded with film for you to take pictures with and send back for us to develop, or to develop and send back, whichever you prefer. One of my most astute students suggested that we should be careful not to offend by making the assumption that it would be a burden to ask you to send photographs, but since I don't know what your access is to photographic equipment and materials, and at what expense, I wanted to offer this option to you. Please do not feel obligated to do this just because we have requested it. If you do take photos and send the camera back for us to develop, I will send you copies of the photos that you took for your own use. Just for the record, I think that one-use cameras are a good example of American's waste of resources and failure to consider the environmental impact of the decisions they make as companies and consumers. However, I am happy to have access to one for this particular purpose, I must admit. In January, a new student named Julian will be joining my class. I
would appreciate it if one of your students could write to him. Also,
I imagine that there may be more than 13 children who would want pen
pals in your class. If so, they could write letters to the following
eleven children at our school, all of whom are 9 or 10 years old: There are also 13 students ages 12-14 at our school who could also write letters back to your students if you would like. My students put their home addresses on their letters, but you may prefer sending all letters together back to me at the school. Thank you very much. I look forward to corresponding with you. Sincerely, Tina Nilsen-Hodges Students' Letter December 15, 2000 Dear Friends, We are a class of twelve students from The Susquehanna School in Binghamton, New York. We are called the Plums, and we are a multi-aged class ages 10-12. Our names are Julia, Stacia, Elizabeth, Puneet, Jordie, Kelly, Sarah, Tracy, Adrian, Zane, Noah, and Joseph. At our school, we have preschool to eighth grade classes. There are only 67 students in our school, divided into five classrooms. Our school is in a small pink building near a large hospital, in a residential section of the city of Binghamton. The school is painted as if there is a garden around it, like a big mural. At our school, we don't have grades, or desks. Instead of working at desks, we work at tables together. We don't just read information in books, we discuss things together to make sure everyone understands it, and do activities to help us learn. Our school emphasizes self-assessment, so we work together with the teacher to develop criteria and assess our own work. The teachers respond to our self-assessments with their own. Our main math program comes from Russia. We are the first school in this country to use this program, and it's cool. We have access to a lot of computers. We have two recesses of half an hour each, but no gym class. The whole school learns to play the recorder for music class. We don't have a cafeteria, so we bring our lunches from home. We have an art class once a week, and twice a week we learn Spanish or French. Every week we have an all-school meeting to work out our problems. There are also other activities in which students from different classrooms work together. We have a school garden, too. This year we planted carrots, potatoes, onions, broccoli, green peas, herbs, pumpkins and squash to serve at Feast. Feast is a yearly event at our school. We invite our parents, families, friends and alumni to come for a meal that we prepare ourselves from the food we grew in the garden and/or harvested at local farms. This year we also visited a local farmers' market to buy food for Feast. What holidays do you celebrate? This time of year, we celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, the Winter Solstice, and the New Year. We drew holiday pictures for you. In just a few days, the whole school will sing and play recorder in a Winter Concert for our families and friends. The smallest children will dance, too. Please write back and tell us about what you grow in your gardens at home and at school. We would also like to know more about what your country is like. What are your houses like? What are they made of? What is your school like? What is your favorite season? What kinds of animals do you see while walking to school? Do you see any large, wild animals? What's the biggest wild animal that lives near you? The biggest wild animal that lives near us are bears, but most of us have never seen one. We have all seen deer, though. Other animals that live in the wild around here include lynx, squirrels, mountain lions, rabbits, raccoons, and crows. We look forward to hearing from you! |
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