Kolkata: Putting aside emails, Twitter and Facebook, students of a school in Kolkata are making pen pals in the US through the old-fashioned postal mail.
The idea hit youngster Alexander Levine while teaching students at Kolkata's Silver Point School on how to write letters and communicate effectively.
To make classwork a fun activity, he asked students of standard six, seven and eight to write and post letters to one of his friends living in New Hampshire.
For the students, Jarde, a few years elder to them, was a complete stranger. They began by introducing themselves to him and soon took over the role of agents of cultural exchange as they began to discuss about Kolkata's famous Durga Puja to their new-found friend.
"It taught them how to start from scratch while explaining something which is completely unknown to someone else. For these students, Durga Puja is integral to their lives but someone in another country might not have even heard of it," Mr Levin told PTI while explaining how the art of making pen pals has become a teaching aid for him in the classroom.
It not only helped students with language practise but also promoted cultural exchange.
An English teaching assistant under Fulbright-Nehru Program of United States-India Educational Foundation (USIEF), he says the students were thrilled to receive a reply in a postal letter.