E-pals on the Internet

NEA Today, Nov 1999

How's this for distance learning: These Oklahoma fifth-graders get their first '15 minutes of fame` in China!

Out in Duncan, Oklahoma, teacher Barbara Jenkins and her fifth grade students aren't letting distance get in the way of sharing ideas and making friends. Their friends just happen to live in China's Liaoning Province.

In the province. Jenkins. fifth graders are now celebrities of a sort. Last year several of the students had their photos featured on the front page of Liaoning's local paper. The newspaper feature profiled the pen pal program in Duncan's Empire School.

"My students were just astounded at the article, says Jenkins. "It was amazing for them to think that they were stars in another country!"

The American students' rise to international "fame" began in December 1995 when Jenkins, then living in China, visited a fifth grade class at the Panjin Experimental School. After returning to the United States, Jenkins initiated a letter exchange between her class and the students in the Chinese class. The pen pal effort just grew from there. Currently, each school year, a new rotation of 85 American children and their Chinese counterparts exchange letters, pictures, stamps. and knick-knacks.

The pen pal program, says Jenkins, has taught her students a lot about Chinese culture, and Jenkins is delighted about her school's expanded global perspective.

"Many of my students have not been outside Oklahoma or even their own county," she points out. "This pen pal program shows that there are real people out there beyond Oklahoma, beyond the prairie. And even though those people are halfway around the world, in many more ways than you think, they're just like us."