Letters in the classroom
A demonstration class with invented pupils. Real classes are never shown.
No email addresses, no accounts to remember
Pupils do not have email addresses on PenPalConnect and do not need them. The teacher adds a class list — first name and last initial, because we deliberately store as little about a child as possible — and each pupil gets a class code and a four-digit PIN. You can print the login cards and hand them out.
Every school is approved by hand before a single pupil can log in. That step is the trust anchor of the whole programme and we are not in a hurry with it.
A partner class, found or brought with you
If you already know a teacher abroad, swap class codes and you are connected. If you do not, the partner directory lists classes looking for one, with the country, the pupils' ages, the class size and the language they want to write in. You write to the other teacher first — a real message, not a bare request — and the two of you work out whether it fits before anyone commits a class.
Once you are partnered, pupils are paired one to one, by hand or all at once.
The teacher reads everything
A class teacher can read every letter their pupils send and receive, and the pupils are told so plainly on their own page. It is for safety, not marking: there are deliberately no scores and no per-pupil statistics.
Younger classes can be set to approval mode, where letters wait for the teacher before they are delivered. Anything the content filter flags reaches the teacher directly. Pupils only ever see their own partner class — they are in a walled garden, invisible to the rest of the site and to anyone in it.