While students at Houghton’s main campus seldom have the opportunity to interact with students at Houghton-in-Buffalo’s campus, Professor Laurie Dashnau and her Literary Non-Fiction class have spent the past semester challenging this division. On Wednesday, November 18th, she and five students from the class traveled to Houghton-in-Buffalo’s (HB) campus to meet with a Writing 101 class, and to see how Houghton’s mission extends beyond the Genesee Valley.
The partnership between Dashnau’s writing class and the HB class has been in the works for the past three months. As a project for the duration of the Fall semester, Dashnau assigned her Non-Fiction students to write to students in Anna Matejova’s (‘11) HB Writing 101 class as pen pals.
“The idea came from me already working with the Writing 101 instructor in Buffalo and having met last year’s students and wanting to seize the opportunity of encouraging them to connect more strongly with Houghton College in general, as well as with our residential students,” said Dashnau.
She consulted with Matejova, a former student of hers, in mid-August about the idea, and Matejova responded enthusiastically. They tried to mostly pair male students with male students and female students with female students. Several of the Non-Fiction students were assigned two pen pals, as there are twelve students in Dashnau’s class, while there are twenty-two in Matejova’s. The letters would be posted to Moodle on a regular basis, and the students could write back and forth. Over the course of the next few months, they gave their students writing prompts for each letter that included topics such as a favorite memory, a historical event or country of interest, and a discussion of a character in a work of literature. According to students in Dashnau’s class, these assigned topics often branch out into other areas as they discover things they have in common despite their differences.
On November 18th, Dashnau and students Carina Martin ‘18, Bonnie Huegel ‘19, Jordan Trautwein ‘19, Alyssa Rogan ‘18, and Andrew Meyers ‘18 all traveled to Buffalo and sat in on an HB Writing 101 class. In the classroom, each Non-Fiction student was assigned to a group of five or six HB students, and instructed to interview one another with questions they had prepared beforehand. Rogan’s group was mostly interested in what her life was like on Houghton’s main campus, while she asked them about their lives in the United States compared to their lives in their home countries. Huegel and her group talked about how they are different and similar, their home lives, their friends and their families.
“Their life experiences are so different from my own, yet really, we are the same,” said Huegel. “It was exciting and eye opening to talk to them and get to know them.”
After writing to one or two of the HB students throughout the semester, it was especially exciting for the Non-Fiction students to finally meet their pen pals. According to Martin, the experience was somewhat strange, but still enjoyable.
“When you’re communicating virtually with someone for a long period, you sometimes formulate an idea of them in your mind that turns out to be very different from the way they really are,” said Martin. “In general, I found that my pen pals’ letters had clearly reflected their interests and personalities, enough that I felt upon meeting them as if we already knew each other. It’s amazing how much of someone’s personality and individuality can be conveyed through a thoughtfully written letter.”
Overall, the pen pal program has proved a success. Not only do students in both classes have the opportunity to practice their writing skills on a technical level, but, according to Rogan, the writing project has enhanced her abilities to relate to and understand people of different cultures through her writing.
“It isn’t often that I connect with people from cultures so vastly different from my own,” said Rogan. “The whole experience has given me a deeper appreciation for diversity.”
Dashnau echoed Rogan’s words, saying that the experience was designed to accomplish this.
“My students have been challenged to think about crafting their writing for students with a different level of experience with the English language as well as cultural knowledge,” she said. “Mother Teresa is quoted as saying, ‘I am a small pencil in God’s hands.’ I think many students feel the same way in regards to their pen pal experience.”