Teacher’s Diary: Teaching the subtle art of letter writing

I am a teacher posted at Kendriya Vidyalaya in Uttar Pradesh’s Gorakhpur district. In today’s digital age when most of our correspondence tends to be through E-mail and WhatsApp, my former students choose to write letters to me whenever they have something to communicate.

I decided to teach them the art of writing letters because it makes our loved ones happy if they get to receive a message in a tangible form. Although it might not be a very popular mode of communication, it has an essence which is unparalleled.

Initially, the students were not interested in writing letters but when they tried writing, they were happy with the outcome.

And one fine day they finally wrote actual letters to their family and friends.

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Being a teacher I had to ensure to teach them that no matter how much convenience we get from technology, nothing will ever replace the joy of handwritten letters and notes.

After a month or so I decided to ask them to share the responses they had received after sending the letters. I was happy to know about their responses as I discovered through my students that people still enjoy receiving letters through post.

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Some said they got a response in the form of another letter while in some cases their letter was acknowledged by sending pictures of handwritten letters on WhatsApp.

There is a lot of thought and sentiment that goes into writing the letters. So to make them learn the art, I asked the students to write letters to the same friends and family and ensure that they should only respond by posting handwritten letters and not send back pictures on WhatsApp instead.

They all got excited and wrote back again to their friends and relatives.

Meanwhile they continued writing letters for a while and enjoyed themselves. However, the third incident of letter writing for the students became a sad experience because by then I had left the school as I was officially transferred. Although it was with a heavy heart, they still wrote goodbye letters to me.

My last day at school was saddening but when my students promised to wholeheartedly continue writing letters to the Hindi teacher who taught them to write one — it warmed my heart.

Soon after, they wrote the fourth letter but hopefully not the last one.