By Ken Jackson
Staff Writer

For Laurie Mercado’s third grade class at Thacker Avenue Elementary, writing projects they’ve recently participated in have helped test their hearts as well as their minds.

Following a lesson on remembering the Sept. 11 attacks on the country when her students penned letters to local police and firefighters thanking them for their community service, the class’ most recent project sent letters much, much farther away.

Through a friend, Mercado got in contact with the U.S. Army Quick Response brigade at Camp Buehring in northern Kuwait, and just sent letters off to the soldiers of Specialist John Nolke’s unit, the 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team out of Fort Benning, Ga. Once they write back, a full-fledged pen pal program will be in full swing.

The kids will keep it going. Mercado requires them to write at least twice per month, but said it won’t be difficult to get them to write.

“We’ll do something in class and someone will ask, ‘Can I write that to my pen pal?’” she said.

This assignment like the 9/11 project fulfills the students’ Caring and Thinking learner profiles for the International Baccalaureate program. And they’re not just doing it through their pens and pencils; the students are chipping in to send care packages of simple goodies the soldiers have requested:  ice pops and other candy, original Kool-Aid, baby wipes and small board games.

Mercado said her students wanted to think bigger like sending water, but they need to keep the list simple to keep the costs of sending them items halfway around the world reasonable.

“We’re looking for any help we can get with shipping,” she said, hoping the community and small businesses can help defray the cost.

You can excuse Mercado’s students if Kuwait is so small that even the best in the class at geography might not pinpoint the tiny country on a map (“Is it next to China?” “It’s near India, right?”). But to hear the students speak about what they’re doing to help lift the spirits of the unit, you know their emotion is well-guided.

“We’re letting them know about us, and learning about them,” eight-year-old Camillo Colon said. “And we’re sending them things they can use that are like healing items.”

Said Jewel Figueroa, 9: “We can help by sending them snacks and water and things that make them feel better about being there.”

Norwin Cardenas, 8, said he asked about the culture of Kuwait in his first letter.

“It helps us learn about different people and their language,” he said.

Nolke said, from the base in Kuwait, that his unit could use every lift of spirit offered.

“We’re on what locals call, ‘the worst piece of land in the desert.’ There is nothing, I mean nothing, here. It’s just sand,” he said via email. “Everyone jumped at the chance to be a pen pal, and thought it would be exciting for the kids to get mail from the other side of the planet.

“I am sure that after the first batch of letters show up, I will have more volunteers to have pen pals.  People as a whole want to help children, and in this way, we can open their mind to more than just their little part of the world.  Plus not having a keyboard or video game controller in front of them for a little while may help them to see that you can use pen and paper for more than doing school work.”

Nolke said that despite having access to a well-stocked base store (PX), that care packages from the U.S. are often the highlight of the day.

“It is always nice to receive packages from back “home,” he said. “Not everyone has people back in the states to send them things, and everyone likes to receive mail. Plus if it’s things that we can’t get readily here, it makes it even nicer.”

Mercado said her students will benefit beyond just fulfilling classroom expectations.

“Something like this creates a bond with people they’d like to meet,” she said. “And it helps create a better class of heroes.”