2022-2023 Pen Pals Session 2
Pen Pals
Letters Trellis joined the Winchester Intergenerational Team to support a Pen Pals program between Middle School students and seniors from the Jenks Center. The WIT is supported by a grant from the Cummings Foundation. The Winchester Council on Aging hosted and supports this program.
Ten seniors from the Jenks Center joined the second PenPal Program. Letters are exchanged with ten middle school students.
This session a coordinator from the Jenks Center is attending our monthly meetings, helping with room reservations, scheduling, and reminders. We appreciate Suzanne's assistance as well as the meeting space provided by the Jenks Center.
A novel aspect of our December session was the coordination of an international correspondence since one senior was traveling to France for the month. Suzanne sent an email photo of the student's letter to the pen pal in France, and she replied to the with a written reply via international mail.
In November, students initiated the first letter to the seniors in the program. We will meet with the seniors monthly, and this group prefers to write their letters from home in order to spend more time writing their response.
An item to be added to future sign up form included a question of preferred pronouns. Preference for reading and writing cursive is already on the form.