Edutopia contributor John Tiersma has published a useful article on ‘The Value of Mailing Encouraging Notes to Students’.
He says, “Early in my teaching career, I found out that a friend and mentor would periodically write encouraging notes to give to his struggling high school social studies students. I was intrigued and decided to write one of my middle school students a personalized note and drop it in the mail.
Everything I wrote was about him: his character, why I liked teaching him, even a challenge to him for the year. That one note has turned into many. My goal was always to write one note for every student I taught, and more years than not, I accomplished that goal. As a middle school teacher, I set aside time to write about five cards a week, and by the end of the year, I had sent home more than 100 personalized, handwritten notes to my seventh-grade students. Now that I’m an elementary school teacher, I have fewer to write, and I try to send each child a note in the first eight weeks of the year.
The response to these messages has been extraordinary and quite humbling. Every year, a few students write back with their own priceless words. Many display the notes on the front of their binder, while others pin them up in their bedrooms. One former student, according to her mom, took the 7-year-old note with her to college to display it on her dorm room wall above her desk”.