Spearheaded by a Sidwell sophomore’s service hours project, 7th graders are writing letters to senior citizens in Spain.

Receiving a handwritten letter in the mail is pretty rare these days and is almost always a welcome arrival. A group of senior citizens in Seville, Spain are about to receive such a gift.

Elena Gullo ‘28, who earned her Sidwell Friend service hours working for two weeks last summer at Fundación Gerón, a senior residence in Seville, was so inspired by the experience that she approached Spanish teacher Nan Pickens with a proposal.

“Elena came to me with the idea of creating a letter exchange between our 7th graders and the older folks at the home—all in Spanish, of course,” says Pickens, who teaches 7th and 8th grade Spanish and is the Middle School language department chair. “My students have been studying Spain all year, and they were excited to write letters to the seniors in Sevilla. At this point in the curriculum, they are easily able to describe their lives and interests in Spanish, which is just what they did in the letters.”

The first letters were mailed in mid-March and should arrive in time for Semana Santa (Easter week). 

Here are a few short excerpts from the letters:

• “My name is Mizuki and I’m in seventh grade. I like to swim, play volleyball, and draw.”
• “My favorite classes are History and Science. I like to cook, dance, and spend time with my friends.”
• “Do you like soccer? I like Barça. My favorite player is Szczesny, the goalkeeper.”

Gullo said that her experience at Fundación Gerón showed her that friendships can arise when you least expect them—even among people decades in age and thousands of miles apart. “The seniors and I played a lot of board and memory games and shared stories about our lives,” She said. “I loved hearing their tales of growing up in Spain and they had so many questions about my life in the United States. They were so curious!” Although she has completed her service hours, Gullo says she wanted to keep the connections she had made alive in some way.

When Gullo told the Seville seniors about the project, they said they would love to receive letters from the “young Americans” and would want to write back immediately. Pickens’ students felt the same excitement after Pickens and Gullo showed them a video Gullo had created about her experience at Fundación Geró as well as sample letters they had written to get the 7th graders in a letter-writing mindset.

Pickens seems as enlivened as the kids about the project. She says that letter writing is a great way for her students to practice writing their Spanish because their interests, passions, and questions create opportunities to use new vocabulary words and sentence structures.

The trans-Atlantic connections they make will only be an added bonus to the joy the letters are sure to bring the recipients.