HS Teachers: Know any sources for foreign pen pals?

[Rowdyboy]

My partner teaches 9th-12th grade Spanish to inner-city kids. Several of them have been looking for pen pals but all they've been able to locate are sleazy "mating" services or for-pay sites. Is there free site that deals in legitimate students-not hookups?

I tried too, but I've given up. Any ideas would be appreciated.

[Rowdyboy]

1. "Anyone, anyone,....Bueller...?"

[Rowdyboy]

2. I've never seen DU totally fail to answer a question....

Serious pen pals must be VERY hard to come by.

[Chovexani]

3. It is *really* hard.

I can't really help you. :( I have some Japanese pen pals but it was a total fluke finding them. I went to an anime convention this summer and signed up to beta test a Japanese telecomm device for an American company that wants to bring it stateside...it's kinda like a fax machine with online capabilities, like a paper e-mail system (it's pretty hard to describe, actually). At any rate it's a bilingual private network (Pan Pacific Online) and every message on the boards is screened so it cuts down on the freaks. You get everything from young kids to housewives to elderly folks trading recipes on there.

Have you tried checking educational sites? They could probably point you to some legit resources. I love the Internet but at the same time there's so much sleaze it's hard to find anything sometimes.

[rucky]

4. http://www.iecc.org/

http://www.iecc.org/

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. Have him ask other Spanish teachers if

they know of an English class in a Spanish-speaking country that might want to correspond with a Spanish class in the U.S.

There are programs that match up English classes in Japan with Japanese classes in other countries, so this may be worth a try.

I had pen pals when I was in high school, and there were many organizations around the country that would send you the name and address of an age-appropriate person for the price of an SASE, but I don't know if they are still in existence.