The details and care that these Korean students took to share a piece of their lives and culture with kids they had no previous contact with blew me and my class completely away.

-Kevin Jones, Teacher at KIPP NYC (The Bronx, New York)

REACH is a project designed to open correspondence with another sixth class abroad. Through correspondence and the process of creating a culture capsule, my objective was for my students to learn about a foreign culture and gain a better understanding of their place in the world.

We began by discussing stereotypes about Korea.

Korea is a dangerous place to live in.
Korean students are very intelligent, obedient, and study all the time.
Koreans can’t speak English.

Our world is an increasingly multi-cultural and open community, but xenophobic and uninformed attitudes persist. A sixth grade student from a foreign state who has never met a Korean cannot really be blamed for their lack of understanding. The world is a small place for an eleven year old. Our role in REACH was to enlighten just a few classes of the reality of modern Korean culture.

We then started to prepare the components for the culture capsule. Each student was responsible for contributing a handwritten letter and an artifact. The handwritten letters shared their personal stories and explained the significance of their artifact. The artifacts ranged from a 한복 to a cup of 불닭볶음면 to a Korean bible to photos of SHINee to Honey Butter Chips to Kakao Friends stickers. The array and diversity of artifacts were impressive.

In the last week of September, students wrapped up their culture capsules and addressed them to be sent overseas. Each culture capsule was sent to a different part of the world to a specific teacher and their class. The culture capsules were accompanied by an e-mail to the teacher and class. Then we waited and hoped our “message in a bottle” would reach its destination.

They did!

As of today, I have received e-mails from four of the five teachers we reached out to. The responses were positive across the board. Students and teachers were genuinely surprised at the gesture and the thoughtfulness put into the capsules. All four even promised to send a culture capsule to PEAI in return!

The world has become such a small space.

-Brenden Lee