Eighth grader Seth Fahlenkamp enjoys the letter he received after writing to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan the previous school year. (Andrea Farrington photo)
by Andrea Farrington
Recently, Seth Fahlenkamp, Jake Hasley and Matt Duggan had a great surprise in English class when they opened letters from Dustin Thomas, David Delarosa and Vincent W. Meyers. English teacher Roxanne Goudy also received a letter from LTC Dave Flynn, Commander.
In his letter Fahlenkamp learned that Thomas is married and has two children, rides a motorcycle, likes the Pittsburgh Steelers and scored 292 out of 300 on his physical training test.
Thomas’s closing was inspirational. “Knowing that you appreciate what we do over here makes it a lot easier to do what it is we do. Thank you for the support. Take care of yourself,” Thomas said.
The letters were in response to those written by seventh and eighth grade students last spring during a friendly letter-writing unit in Goudy’s English class. To practice that concept, students wrote “Letters to Soldiers,” a new project last year, to soldiers in Iraq to feed positive feeling and appreciation to the people in the armed forces.
In these letters, students wrote about the weather, hobbies and school. Goudy plans to continue the project again, because it gave the students a chance to connect with someone in the service.
This idea came from the program, Forgotten Soldiers Outreach which sends packages and letters of encouragement to deployed soldiers whose families cannot afford to send packages continually. The web site is http://www.forgottensoldiers.org/about-us/
The students wrote the letters, which were then sent in bulk to Forgotten Soldiers Outreach for screening and directing purposes.
No comments:
Post a Comment