Signed, sealed, delivered! The 2025–26 LPS school year is officially wrapped.
None of this happens without the STEM professionals, teachers, students, and donors who show up year after year – and because of this incredible community, we have 18,460 reasons to celebrate.
Students from Mr. Moore’s class in Baldwin Park, CA, receiving their letters from all over the world!
Let’s dive in:
By the Numbers
- 8,460 letters exchanged 💌
- 2,729 students matched with a STEM pen pal
- 186 Letter Opening Parties
- All 50 US states and 31 countries that letters were mailed to/from this year
- 17 states and 1 US territory where LPS students and teachers live
- 154 students exchanged letters in a language other than English, including these languages: Spanish, Tagalog, Cantonese, Hindi, Russian, Swahili, Urdu, Ukrainian
- 173 awards given out to STEM pen pals who went above and beyond
- 513 active Stamp Squad members
The 31 countries where LPS letters were mailed to and from this year!
Core Memories Unlocked
- A Song for Ellie 🎶
For the first time in LPS history, a student received a song written just for her!
Ellie’s pen pal Medhi – whose work sits at the intersection of deep tech (AI, quantum computing) and business commercialization – used an AI song generator to create Veinte Orugas (Twenty Caterpillars). The song’s lyrics feature things Ellie had shared in her letters and the chorus is in Spanish, Ellie’s native language!
“Writing to Ellie has been one of the highlights of my year,” Mehdi shared.
- LPS Teachers Called 📞 Our Pen Pals Answered
This year, teachers in the Phoenix area organized a STEM career day for their students and reached out to the LPS pen pal network for help. Four STEM professionals came in to present!
None of them were pen pals for kids at that school, just compassionate volunteers who are part of this community and wanted to show up for students in their city. We love that this network is growing beyond the letters!
- Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue, Our Pen Pals Got Valentines Too 💚
A class of 8th graders in Rhode Island mailed Valentine’s Day cards to their pen pals this year – just because they wanted to!
Letters stamped and ready to be mailed out from Miss Johnson’s class in Moreno Valley, CA!
LPS IRL (in real life)
Our program is built with love around snail mail, but there’s nothing quite like meeting up in person!
- Phoenix, Arizona
In November, our team visited the greater Phoenix area for a community meet up. We were able to meet with 3 teachers and stop by 2 classrooms.! - San Francisco, California
In March, the team visited two Bay Area schools for Letter Opening Parties and hosted a community meet-and-greet that brought together board members, donors, teachers and pen pals – some of whom left with new job leads and networking connections they didn’t expect to find at an LPS event!
The cherry on top was that we got to meet the student who won the LPS sticker contest!
San Francisco, March 2026: LPS staff getting to meet some of our pen pals and donors face-to-face.
Pen Pal Awards 🏆
At the end of the school year, we asked our 48 teachers to identify STEM pen pals who went above and beyond with their letters. There are three categories: Excellent Explanations, Exceptionally Engaging Letters, and Compassionate Connections.
Out of the 2,729 incredible pen pals who volunteered this year, we are excited to celebrate the 173 STEM professionals who were awarded!
Here are some of the award messages from teachers and students that made us smile:
- “Weeks after Carter received your letter, he would still find ways to refer back to something you mentioned 📬✨—to the point where other students joked about his “pen pal flex” 😄📚 Thank you for engaging with Carter, and by extension, all of our students 💙🌟” – Ms. Farrell
- “I just wanted to say thank you for being such an amazing pen pal to Jaxon 💙 It can sometimes be difficult to truly engage high-achieving students, but every time he read your letters, I could see his mind working and lighting up with excitement ✨ Your conversations challenged him, inspired him, and made writing feel meaningful for him. I really appreciate your letters—it made a bigger impact than you probably realize 💙🌟 Thank you!” – Ms. Roman
- “Thank you so much, Clover, for all of the letters! 💌 Every paragraph you wrote inspired me to look at bugs and plants differently 🐛🌿. You 100% deserve this award for being the kindest, most awesome pen pal ever! 🏆✨ “ – 5th grade student in San Diego, CA
- “Your pen pal appreciated that you shared that school was hard for you too at some spots. You gave advice that they think they can try out. Your pen pal enjoyed hearing about your hobbies of bike riding and stopping to listen to the birds. Your pen pal said he tried that, and heard a bird then smiled.” – Ms. Siwiecki
- “Alejandro’s STEM pen pal has consistently written to him in both Spanish and English, building an incredible connection. 😊 Alejandro is highly motivated to write because he wants so badly to connect with his pen pal. His writing skills and confidence have grown tremendously this year, and his STEM pen pal has played a huge role in inspiring that growth. Thank you for making such a meaningful impact! 💙” – Ms. Spivey
This STEM pen pal from was given a “Compassionate Connections” award from their student pen pal!
Challenges We Faced
Not every part of this year was easy, and in the spirit of transparency, we want to share some of those challenges with you.
- We had planned to reach 3,000 students and landed at 2,729. A couple of existing school partnerships didn’t get re-approved this year due to shifting approval processes and priorities largely outside our control. One returning teacher also had to step back at the last minute after her roster grew too large to manage.
- The most difficult moment came when a school made a request we weren’t able to agree to at face value, as it would have compromised our ability to ensure a safe and inclusive experience for our volunteer pen pals. We made several attempts to reach out to school leadership to work towards a solution together, but ultimately, weren’t able to connect with the decision makers. As a result, we were forced to make a tough decision to end the program at that school after the first letter round – the first time in our organization’s history that a school partnership has ended mid-year.
Moving forward, we’re being more proactive about building relationships with school leadership early in the school year, before any issues arise, and we’re adding clearer language to our partnership agreements up front. These moments tested us, but they also clarified what we stand for and strengthened how we show up for our community going forward. 💪
Working Towards
This year, we focused internally on understanding more about STEM identity, or how much someone sees themself as a “STEM person”. We wanted to learn what impacts middle schoolers’ concept of themself today and how that impacts their aspirations for the future. We thought about how our program supports building a positive STEM identity. Our team spent time understanding the research and developing our own definitions, so we have real clarity on what we’re working towards.
Going forward, we’ll be working to build intentional identity-building moments into the program. We’ll be exploring the best ways to measure this work because identity is hard to measure – it is constantly changing and highly contextual. We’re also thinking about how participating in this program shapes our teachers’ and STEM professionals’ own identities as STEM people, not just our students’.
What’s next?
We hired not one, not two, but three new Program Managers to be able to run our program this fall that matches 4,500 students with STEM professionals. That’s a 50% increase from the year before!
Stay tuned for more Letter Opening Parties, pen pal stories, and updates from classrooms across the country.
In the meantime, here’s how you can help us keep the engine running:
- Spread the word: Share the program with family, friends, colleagues, and fellow STEM enthusiasts and encourage them to join our mailing list. Be the first to know what’s happening at LPS!
- Invest in the work: Every donation fuels more connections and more “aha!” moments. $8/month sponsors a student’s participation in the yearlong program. Join the Stamp Squad monthly giving community today!
From all of us at LPS, “thank you” doesn’t feel like a big enough phrase – but it’s the best way we can express what we mean. We’re so grateful for everyone who has been part of this year, and we cannot wait to keep sharing the impact you’re making in science classrooms across the country!
