Return
to the "POINTER VIEW"May 30, 2003
Return
to the "POINTER VIEW"
May
30, 2003
Flat Stanley visits West Point
Story and photo by Cadet 1st Class Daniel Helmer
By now Flat Stanley must be one of the world’s greatest travelers. He has been to every continent, traveled aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery, visited President George W. Bush in the White House and toured Kabul, Afghanistan, at least twice.
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| Flat Stanley (third from left) poses with members of the linguistics class here. The little world traveler’s West Point adventures became teaching tool for elementary school students nationwide. |
The Flat Stanley Project is the brainchild of Dale Hubert, an educator in Ontario, Canada, who had his elementary school students send personalized paper cutouts of Flat Stanley to hosts around the world. His hope is to "foster child literacy through letter writing and to increase intercultural communication and understanding."
The inspiration for the project came from Jeff Brown’s book "Flat Stanley." In the story the protagonist, who is flattened by a bulletin board hanging over his bed, mails himself to a friend.
Now he has come to West Point thanks to sponsors in the Department of Foreign Languages.
Cadets first heard about the Flat Stanley Project from DFL instructor Col. Terry Potter.
After responding to a Flat Stanley letter sent by his niece, Potter realized that West Point would be a great sponsor location for Flat Stanleys from across the country.
Potter wrote the project’s developer, Hubert, and told him "cadets would surely make enthusiastic correspondents for children who want to know more about West Point and the Army."
Potter presented Flat Stanley to his "Nature of Modern Languages" class as a volunteer project, in which cadet participants would not only help mail out Flat Stanley, but would also do research analyzing Flat Stanley’s success as a literacy project.
More than 30 cadets volunteered their time to teach young correspondents about life at USMA and their future in the Army. Flat Stanley enjoyed numerous adventures at West Point. He even became an honorary member of the Army Gymnastics team for a day.
All in all, USMA received and responded to 33 letters from elementary schools nationwide.
"The project was a tremendous success," Potter said. "This was truly a cadet effort and their creative and sincere efforts contributed to the lives and development of many school children."
