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We suggest that you should begin by reading: Teacher moderated student e-mail.

There are many answers to this question. I know of a few teachers who have used email with their students in the last few years under less than ideal circumstances.  Here are a few of these situations and I encourage you to respond by adding other possible scenarios:
 

1. Worst case scenario: The teacher who had an email account at home but did not have access to email at school at all:

We have a teacher in our district who conducted an excellent email project with her Grade 2 class last year using her own personal email from home. Her students wrote their messages on paper and she typed them out and sent them from her home. When the replies arrives she saved them on disk, brought them to school, and printed copies for the students to read.

Variation: Kindergarten teachers could ask a parent volunteer to take dictation from students and do the typing, then the teacher could send the email from the school account.

Note
Division 1 students need to see the message on paper since they might have difficulty with the abstract idea of a written messages going over the phone lines.
 

2. A single computer in the classroom this year permits a teacher to allow one student to go to the computer at a time and enter and sent email themselves. This is done while other students are working on other written work. Very young children will need the teacher to set-up the situation by entering the email address before each student begins. The teacher checks the message before the student clicks send.

Variation: This can be done from the computer lab also. All students are using word processors for writing and one student at a time goes to the teacher station to send their email.

Variation:  Another situation occurred in a school where there was a single internet connection: The teacher had his Grade 5 students go to the computer lab and type their own email messages using a word processor. They saved the files on their disks. He collected the disks and copied and pasted each message into a single file then emailed it.

Variation: This process can be made much easier by passing a single disk around the class and saving all documents on one disk. It takes a little longer to save the files but drastically shortens the time it takes to
assemble all items into one message.

Variation: I've also seen this approach used in a computer lab which has a teaching assistant. In that case the students were instructed to save their documents on to the desk top and the TA went around the room and dropped all files on to a single disk. Then cut she and pasted all messages into a single document to send.

Variation:   A Better alternative..., another teacher had students save their documents as a text file in to a shared folder and he simply attached about five files to a new message and emailed it.
 

3. There are situations where Parent volunteers have been trained to take single students to the library to help and monitor students sending email.
 

4. Using Netscape Communicator it is possible to set one profile for all computers in the lab to be able to send email through the one student account. Directions for setting up User Profiles are available on the intranet at URL:  http://128.37.3.27/tech/tips/profile.html. (Also, FYI, here are many other useful tips available at: http://128.37.3.27/tech/tips/tipstric.html.)

 In this case all students can use email simultaneously. The teacher can check the email before students press send. All email responses would arrive in the one mail box and the teacher can monitor and distribute email replies to individual students or to other classes.

5. For the experienced user, there is also the possibility of using shared folders through peer-to-peer networking can facilitate this process.

You can see from these cases that a resourceful teacher can find several ways of making even difficult situations work effectively. Any of these teachers would have considered themselves very fortunate indeed to have 2 or 3 connections to the internet from their classroom or indeed multiple connections to the internet from the school library or computer lab.

I encourage you to suggest other possible scenarios.