Young Pen Pals Meet and Greet

After a few awkward moments of shuffling feet, hands in pockets and side glances, the children who had never laid eyes on one another before Thursday acted as if they’d been friends for a year as they played games and read together under the midmorning sun at Lake Balboa Park.

But then, the more than 400 students from Bay Laurel Elementary School in Calabasas and Telfair Elementary School in Pacoima have known each other for that long--as pen pals.

“When you meet somebody you don’t know, you get excited,” said Telfair third-grader Aurora Velez upon meeting Marisa Fair, 9, her Bay Laurel pen pal.

The girls are part of a sister-school relationship that began more than a year ago, when the students from the affluent Bay Laurel campus began conducting book and toy drives for students at Telfair.

The relationship solidified when Bay Laurel children took up a collection for the family of a Telfair kindergartner who died last year.

When teachers and parents from the schools saw the impact that had on the students, they established the pen pal program.

“This has opened their eyes tremendously,” said teacher Kathleen Sternbach of her Bay Laurel third-graders. “They come from a situation where they have whatever they need. It’s great for them to meet kids from another area and find out that they share many things.”

The students said they were surprised to find they have many of the same traits and interests as their cross-town pen pals.

“It was kind of weird,” said Nicole Sapiro, 8, whose mother, Lisa, spearheaded the effort at Bay Laurel. “We didn’t tell them anything about us, but when we started writing, we found out that we have so many things in common.”

Ellen Nathan, Telfair’s librarian and co-organizer of the program, said her children live in a “rather insulated world and they don’t have a lot of experiences outside of their community.”

“It’s a unique experience for them to have found friends 35, 40 miles away. It’s so important for people to connect, for children to connect and for communities to connect with each other.”