OXFORD – Students from the Boxberry School received letters from the North Pole last week. Student interns from the Early Childhood Program at the Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School Tech School teamed up with Boxberry teachers for the project.

Apparently Santa has a pet polar bear that takes Santa’s letters and licks them, rendering the letters unreadable. Boxberry students learned the correct way to address a letter and wrote to the polar bear asking for safe passage for all letters to Santa.

The students received a letter back with sentiments from the polar bear such as, “I promise I will not lick your letters anymore. I heard you are doing very well in math this year. Keep up the good work.”

Boxberry has four interns (two a day) who come in four days a week to learn about working in an early education environment. The interns, Josh Paine, Kami Toothaker, Jennifer Tracy and Krista Ladd, collected the North Pole letters, personalized one in return from the Polar Bear to each child and delivered them last week. Ladd made sure the envelopes were identical.

Boxberry head teacher Georgina Grenier said of the interns, “They have been invaluable to us. We are going to miss them at the end of the semester when they switch (sites and we receive new interns).”

Grenier added, “They have helped the students so much with reading and math, and they allow us to better provide individual attention to our students.” Paine and Toothaker agree, “There is a lot of one-on-one time with the kids. We love working here. We’re learning a lot.”

For more information about the Early Childhood Program contact Eileen Steck at 743-8914. For more information about the Boxberry School, visit www.boxberryschool.org or call 743-9700.