I have met some of the best and worst people through pen pal writing, so guess what I hope for my future students to do (especially when we get to the Jane Austen stuff)? I love it when I hear of English teachers that incorporate pen pal writing into their lesson plans, especially if the recievers of the pen pal writing are from foriegn lands. Not only are they taking a stab at their English skills, but dealing with different kinds of people of different cultures. The different kinds of people that were talked about in this article were eighth grades becoming pen pals with senior citizens. Some just did the homework, other ended up making long lasting friendships.

I checked this out just to see what potentials for novels and plays for seventh graders to study. Just a thought, why do English teachers keep teaching the same old books? Some of the stuff that I found was stuff that I was taught back when I was all three levels of school. Isn't time to update the reading list to stuff that has be written in last 20 years or even more recent instead of stuff that is outdated by like 50 or 100 years ago. I can't complain about Mark Twain though. I do like his writing. But Julie and the Wolves, The Outsiders, The Giver?

I am a big fan of organized chaos teaching. The best teachers that I ever had in school taught with aspects of this ability.