After a long day at school, a small group of students at Revere High School meet in a common area. There, they meet the adviser and president of a club. During the club meeting, the students write letters to pen pals they have at a different school. The students write about themselves and ask questions about their pen pal’s interests, hobbies, lives and anything else that they want to know.

Restorative Social Justice Club (RSJ) is a club at Revere that’s goal is to embrace the differences between members of a student body. In the past, RSJ has given presentations on topics such as autism awareness and Women’s History Month, but this year, they have a new project. RSJ has decided to write letters to students at another high school in Ohio, North High School. The school is located in Akron, and every few weeks, RSJ members get together for a meeting and write letters to their pen pals. There are about fifteen students at Revere High School who are participating and eight at North High School, but both schools are hoping to expand their groups.

North High School has a very diverse student population. All of the students that members of RSJ wrote to are immigrants and English is not their first language. Some of the students are also refugees.
Neha Yadavalli, a sophmore and president of RSJ, explained that she thinks writing these letters benefits the students not only at Revere High School but also at North High School.

“At Revere, [members of RSJ] are being exposed to different languages, cultures and people from different countries. In Revere, a lot of the people here are primarily born in America, so it’s nice to have exposure to that and then the students there [North High School] get to interact with people who have been living in the states their whole life,” Yadavalli said.

Anish Chandran, a member of RSJ, explained that his sister, who graduated in 2022, came up with the idea for a club she was a part of last year. Chandran thought it would be a good idea to bring this project to RSJ, as he believed it aligned with what the club normally does.

“We had DON last year, Diversify Our Narrative, and my sister started it. The whole point of that club was to encourage a more diverse choice of books in our libraries and in our schools and through that, we also started a pen pal project. Last year, we had eighth graders write to students at North High School . . . this year, DON wasn’t a club anymore, so I thought why . . . not bring that over to RSJ. They’re Restorative Social Justice, they’re pretty involved with this type of stuff. So we brought it over to Mrs. Simonelli, and they really liked the idea,” Chandran said.

Chandran further explained his goal in bringing this project to RSJ and having Revere students write letters.

“The whole point was to just support inclusion and just help them [students at North High School] feel more comfortable,” Chandran said.

Yadavalli explained what the students at Revere wrote to their pen pals.

“In our letters, we pretty much talk about our personal lives, what we’re up to, our interests, who we are as people, et cetera. And then we asked questions about the students at North’s personal lives and their experiences,” Yadavalli said.

Chandran spoke about what he put in his letter. Since he has only sent one so far, he wanted to keep the information and topics he spoke about pretty basic and light at first.

“I first started off with general things like how old I am, my name, and then I just transitioned into some regular things like what my favorite food is and some hobbies I have,” Chandran said.

Chandran mentioned how it was interesting for him to hear about all of the students’ different cultures and backgrounds. He explained one part of the letters that stuck out to him.

“In literally every letter, they put what the meaning of their name was and so it was kind of cool,” Chandran said.

Yadavalli also spoke about things she found interesting in the letters that she read.

“What was interesting was that a lot of the students that wrote back to the kids at Revere were from a lot of different countries, and a lot of them had never seen snow before. That’s pretty interesting considering we live in Ohio and it snows a lot here, but also the kids, they’re very sweet, very genuine and curious people, and I think it’s great to be exposed to people with those qualities,” Yadavalli said.

Bonnie Simonelli, the adviser of RSJ, wants to take this project even further. She explained how she wants the students to meet electronically and eventually she hopes they will be able to meet in person.

“Our goal is to eventually have a Zoom meeting so that they could meet each other and if that works out well, we would love to do a shadow day. Which is a big deal because it would either mean their students coming here for a day or our students going [there]. Or even like half of our students going there and half of them coming here . . . if that doesn’t work I’d love to maybe even just meet at a park at the end of the school year when it’s warm and just be outside,” Simonelli said.

Simonelli said that this project was meant to be more one on one. The students each picked one person (although some had to double up), and they would get to know each other instead of writing letters to anonymous people.

“Each student [at Revere] has kind of picked their person out of the eight, so I have some students who have doubled up but, of our thirteen, we’ve kind of targeted one student and been like this is who I write to. We were going to develop more of a one to one relationship,” Simonelli said.

Chandran explained why he thinks it is important that the students at North High School receive their letters.

“They’re able to relate with us a lot. I’ve been reading these letters and there are people who have similar interests and similar hobbies. So it just helps them feel like they have a friend, not only in their school but maybe in this school as well,” Chandran said.

Yadavalli explained how these letters have affected her. She explained how it has made her want to learn more about other people’s culture.

“Being exposed to people who have come from different parts of the world or who have different life experiences really is very important. It definitely changes your mindset. Personally, I think that I have become a lot more curious about what other people are up to and as I always like to say, I think it’s very important in this world to be more curious and less judgemental,” Yadavalli said.

RSJ members will continue to write letters back and forth with their pen pals and learn more about them. Chandran encourages other Revere students to come to RSJ meetings and join in on the writing.