Pen Pal Blues

Monika, the other English Teacher in my town, is very much the opposite of me. In fact if you were to stereo type us, one of us would be super English Teacher who is always up late at night creating wonderful lessons, and the other would be a slacker who puts in the bear minimum to get by.
Monika’s been all over the web lately arranging exchange programs with other classes all over the world. However since Monika teachers at the elementary schools only, and formal English education doesn't start until Junior High School, she is limited in what she can do to mostly exchanging pictures and videos.
So, when Monika got a bunch of English letters from a fourth grade class in Israel, she passed them onto me. This worked out well for everyone. Monika was able to pass on the letters, the kids in Israel were able to get a reply, and at my school I was able to present the idea of a pen-pal exchange with Israel as my own idea, and thus impress my Japanese colleagues with how hard I was working setting the whole thing up. So I guess you could say it was really a good deal for me.
Of course these things are never without their hitches. Below is part of the e-mail I sent to the teacher in Israel describing how things went:


Hello. My name is Joel Swagman. I assume Monika has told you about me. I am the other Assistant English Teacher in the town of Godo, in Japan.

As I'm sure Monika has told you, the English education system in Japan is a bit slow. Students do not start learning English until seventh grade. Since Monika only works in the Elementary schools, it would not be possible for her students to write a response to your class. So your message was forwarded to me. My 9th grade students are about on the same English level as your 4th grade students, as I'm sure you'll see by reading the replies.

Despite the age difference, many of my students were very excited about writing back to your students, and many of the girls especially were very excited about seeing the photos and thought your students were very cute and wanted to write to them. Unfortunately the timing has not worked out well. As an assistant teacher, the only class I have control over is the elective class, and that meets only once a week, and is frequently canceled. Therefore it was two weeks from the time Monika forwarded your message to me until the time I had an opportunity to write back. I apologize for the delay.

The other unfortunate thing about the timing is my 9th grade students will soon be graduating. The Japanese school year ends in March. In fact today was the last time the elective class will meet. If your class would like to send replies to this batch of letters (and many of my students would love it if they did) I will be able to make sure my students receive them. However, as my students will be graduating, I can no longer make them write any more letters, and any future letters they write would be on their own initiative. To that end I gave my students the option of writing either their e-mail address or street address on their letters. Some did, some didn't. Either way any letters you send to me I can make sure that they receive.

Again I apologize about the timing. Perhaps when the new school year starts in April we could start more correspondence, if your students don't mind having new partners. Another unfortunate timing issue: today many of my students were out of the class taking tests, so in order to make sure everyone of your students got a response, I had some of my students write two letters. Then, halfway through class, some of the students who were taking tests returned to class and wanted to write letters. So I took the letters from some students who had already finished, and gave them to the students who were just arriving. This accounts for the bizarre situation where some of your students have two letters from two different people, and other students will share the same pen-pal. My apologies.

My students did not have computer access, so I retyped the letters myself. I did my best to avoid correcting their grammar, and for the most part left it as it was. The only thing I inserted was a reference to gender in cases where it wasn't clear, in case your students may be unfamiliar with Japanese names. I should mention that a number of the names of your students I could not tell the gender on, and did made my best guesses.

As many of your students made reference to Israeli pop culture, so many of my students did with Japanese pop culture. I hope this doesn't cause any confusion. I look forward to hearing back from you,