Students discover the joys of receiving mail

WILLIAMSBURG — In an era of immediate messaging, Mary Welsh Elementary School is bringing back snail mail.

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Fifth grade teacher Cathy Mochal received a grant from the Williamsburg School District Foundation to set up a school postal service. Mail carriers delivered 260 letters the first week.

Mochal applied for the grant — earmarked for school improvement — a couple of years ago to set up a school postal service, she said. “I thought it would build more community,” she said, and build morale.

And it has. “We’ve had 659 [letters] just in two weeks.”

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Two days a week, fifth graders Frankie Klingner and Alex Siefert-Langfitt collect letters from the mailbox in the school office and take them to Mochal’s classroom.

Brixton Spratt, Abe Moore, Macy Wardenburg and Brennen Davis sort the mail.

Millie Weiermann records how many letters are sent each week. “We count all the mail,” said Mochal. “We collect data. We’re going to make graphs.”

The students don’t have a lot of information yet. They’d collected mail only five times as of Feb. 20.

Ten students deliver the mail to numbered boxes outside each classroom.

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The preschool and first grade wing is named Mary for mail purposes. Alex Nielson, Nolan Streigel and Liam Durr deliver mail there.

David Brenneman and Greenlee Kitzmann deliver mail to the second and third grade hallway, designated Welsh Street.

Sadie Tiernan, Logan Cooling, Easton Maas and Kinsey Pasturczak deliver mail on Raider Drive, the fourth, fifth and sixth grade wing.

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Brexton Cobb delivers mail to the office.

“They are so pumped,” said Mochal of her mail team. “It’s a lot of fun just to see them.”

Fifth grade teachers chose the initial mail team from students who had study hall at the time of mail delivery. They chose students they felt are reliable and dependable, said Mochal.

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Processing and delivering mail gives the students responsibility, and “it gives them joy to give joy” to the students who are receiving mail, Mochal said.

The entire student body learns from the program. They learn to write different types of letters and how to properly address an envelope with classroom number, street name, city, state, ZIP code and a return address.

They have to take their letters to the mailbox in the office or drop them off in classroom bins.

Most of the mail is produced by the older students, said Mochal. The bin for grades 4-6 is usually overflowing.

Teachers have special paper students can use for their letters. The paper is lined for a letter on one side and for an address and return address on the back side. The letter folds to become an envelope.

Cards are also available for the children to write on, and stickers serve as stamps.

The students usually text their friends when they want to communicate, they said. But they are finding joy in mail delivery as it was done in the past.

“Kids are very excited at the end of the day to get mail,” Mochal said.

A student directory helps students find the “addresses” of their friends if they aren’t sure what classrooms they are in, and another directory tells what “street” each teacher’s classroom is on.

Students in any grade can write to students in any other grade. They can write letters to friends or find new pen pals. They can send get well and thank you cards, letters of sympathy or good luck wishes, said Mochal.

Students can write persuasive letters or opinion letters and send them to the principal.

Invitations, letters of congratulations, birthday and holiday cards may be sent through Raider mail.

“There were a lot of Valentine cards that went out,” said Mochal. The first week of mail delivery was the week before Valentine’s Day.

“Early feedback is really good,” said Superintendent Chad Garber in his blog. “Students (and staff) have all talked about the joy they experience when they receive a letter in the mail, and the letter-writing process is great for students to practice their writing skills.”

PALS has given $500 to the program to pay for ink pads and stamps so each piece of mail can be identified by the homeroom it came from, said Mochal.

Each class will let students create the design for the homeroom stamps.

Another stamp will serve as a postal stamp so letters can’t be sent more than once.

“I like how … you can talk to kids you know that are younger,” said Brennen Davis.

“I just like how I go to other hallways to … deliver notes,” Greenlee Kitzman said.

“You can work on writing … while writing letters to my friends,” said Brixton Spratt. “It’s not very common … for a school to have a mail system, and I think that’s really cool.”

Davis said he likes that he can send mail to favorite teachers he’s had in the past.

Mochal has received letters from former students, she said. “It feels good to get mail.”

“My ultimate goal is that every child receive mail,” said Mochal.