The Importance of Making Connections

In 2007, two second grade girls, Maggie Cribbs from Calvary Day School and Kirsten Eyraud from St. Mary’s Elementary School in St. Mary’s, Georgia, were paired up by their teachers to be pen pals. Throughout the year, the girls wrote monthly letters to each other. At the end of the year, Miss Thaggard’s class traveled to Saint Mary’s where the girls met and visited with each other. Fast forward 10 years, and these two girls are both attending the Freshman College Summer Experience at the University of Georgia. They meet and become friends. One night near the end of their sophomore year, Kirsten pulls out a picture she and her mother found as they were going through papers and souvenirs that had been saved from her elementary years, and there was a picture of Maggie and Kirsten from second grade. 

“Oh my gosh, did you know we were pen pals in the second grade?” she asked Maggie. “When I found this picture I immediately recognized you!” 

Maggie said, “It was the craziest thing because we had been friends since the summer before freshman year, and this was the end of our sophomore year.” We are so thankful for a school and teachers like Miss Thaggard that value the importance of making connections, some of which may end up being lifelong friends, like Maggie and Kirsten.