The Merriam Handshake Project was started in the 5th grade classroom of Ed Kaufmann and the 6th grade classroom of Mary Ann Brandt in an effort to get the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees to shake hands at their opening games to prove that team rivalry does not require team animosity. (See The Story Behind the Handshake Project.)

In order to convince the teams, the classrooms organized themselves into three strands with one working on posters, another on letters, and a third on a slide show. Once they had finished, they sent all these materials off to the two teams (and the Commissioner of Baseball) and waited for the results.

Merriam is posting some of these materials so that they can be shared with the community at large. Unfortunately, we only have copies of the letters and the slide shows, since the posters themselves were mailed off and no pictures were taken of them (which is a shame since they were great posters).

• The letters: The classes sent letters to various people on the Red Sox and the Yankees plus Allan H. (Bud) Selig, Commissioner of Baseball. Each letter was written by a separate team of students. The contents of three of those letters are posted here.
• The slide show: The classes also sent a CD containing a slide show to everyone who was sent a letter. The classroom team responsible for the slide show created all of the show's contents and designed its presentation. They originally created it in AppleWorks and then copied the slides over to PowerPoint (all on Macs). See the slide show here (JavaScript must be enabled).

The classroom team responsible for the slide show created all of the show's contents and designed its presentation. They originally created it in AppleWorks and then copied the slides over to PowerPoint (all on Macs).

Return to the Handshake Project page.