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Students receive messages from across the ocean |
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Wednesday, 27 December 2006 |
Flat Stanleys from Kuwait arrived via a special messenger last Thursday morning at Dr. Hamman school.
By Sharon Ulrich
Taber Times
Norma Hoppins, whose granddaugter Erin Pack attends the school, brought the special packages for the Grade 2s from students in Kuwait.
According to the Flat Stanley Project Web site, the premise of Flat Stanley provides a reason for people to keep in touch with each other . For teachers who run the project, it gives students another reason to write.
Hoppins spent the last 15 years of her career teaching drama, and had been retired for four years when she got a call to teach for a few months. Although it was across the world in Kuwait, she said she'd always wanted to do something like that.
"In two -and-a-half days I shut down my life and I realized the toughest part was going to be away from my grandgirl."
Hoppins started teaching in a brand new school building where at a cost of $10,000 to attend, she noted 14 of her 22 students were boys. The children wear uniforms - a white shirt, with navy pants, skirts or jumper, while many of the girls wear Hijab, or a veil, carefully wrapped to cover their heads and necks.
The Grade 2 students speak English quite well, she said. However, they use their words differently.
"Over here we say, 'my tooth is falling out.' They say, 'my tooth is dropping down.' "
But at the school her students, along with others, had been carefully creating their own Flat Stanleys, telling of their lives over there.
Hoppins explained Flat Stanley came to be from a book where Stanley had been flattened when a bulletin board fell on him. He was so flat he could fly like a kite and travel to many places by mail. And while teachers from Kuwait could have sent the Flat Stanleys to places like Iran or Afghanistan, Hoppins noted they wanted to send them here to Canada, somewhere noticeably different.
"Students make paper Flat Stanleys and begin a journal with him for a few days. Then Flat Stanley and the journal are sent to another school where students there treat Flat Stanley as a guest and complete the journal. Flat Stanley and the journal are then returned to the original sender," according to the site.
Many of her students took their Flat Stanleys up the Kuwait Towers, some 176 feet high, and took pictures to send over here, she said.
The Kuwait Towers are the biggest landmark in Kuwait to see, noted Hoppins. And while a tourist attraction, she explained the spheres hold 26 million gallons of water to ensure the supply for the two-and-a-half-million people who live in the small country.
Flat Stanleys also showed up in pictures of Souks, known to us as shops or markets, much like farmers market here, she explained.
Hoppins will return to school on Jan. 2, and as Christmas is celebrated in Canada, she noted in Kuwait, they celebrate a religious holiday called Eid.
And whether the Flat Stanleys go back with her, or find their way by mail, perhaps they will have many tales to tell of their Canadian holiday, and the children they were with. |
