At first, Times taught Heroism through text, until she read an article in Tyngsboro’s town bulletin ‘Neighbor to Neighbor.’

“I read about a Tyngsboro woman who had a couple of soldiers,” said Mrs. Times.

A local woman adopted a few soldiers for several months and Mrs. Times felt that she should do the same.  

Mrs. Times decided to contact the woman who submitted the article and brought the idea into the classroom.

She decided to take on the challenge with her second period World Literature Honors class. At 8:30 every morning a “very upbeat and energetic class” enters Times class ready to learn and write, but most importantly correspond.

Sophomore Chris Michaud stated, “We write to different soldiers, and we don’t sign them so I made up a name once,” he joked.

However, Times definitely wants her students to know it’s the thought that counts. 

Individually, Times sends one to two letters a week and one to two packages per month. This is a lot to handle so her period two class also puts in letters and shares good stories with them.

Sophomore Renee Laurencelle, another student in Time’s class stated, “I like writing to them, it’s way better than writing a paper!”

Times enjoys it as well and has received several letters back from the troops. Some soldiers write back individually to the students, as others wrote back to Times or the class as a whole.

Even though their unit on heroism has passed, “I encourage the students to look beyond their books we’ve read and write letter to real life heroes.”