'Trucker Buddies' Bring Life on the Road Home for Students

By Jennifer Chauhan

Passing through Tennessee earlier this year, truck driver Donnie Schaff dropped a postcard of a guitar-playing pig dressed in cowboy garb into a mailbox. Underneath the picture, the caption read, "Nashville Cowboy." A few days later, a class of 4th graders at Al Tahoe Elementary School in South Lake Tahoe, Calif., was squealing with delight.

As the students' official "Trucker Buddy," Schaff regularly sends the class cards and letters from stops along his route. In fact, their correspondence with Donnie has become an integral part of the 4th graders' school lives.

When their teacher, Sheila Cassin, saw an ad in a school newsletter for the Trucker Buddy program, a national initiative that matches truck drivers with elementary school classes, she jumped at the opportunity. Her students were low-achievers; getting them to write a single sentence, she says, was an accomplishment. Several months after linking up with Schaff, they were cranking out four to five paragraphs. Cassin credits the...