Students from six countries will gather in Salem and Monmouth.

A worldwide summit on the environment is drawing 100 young experts to Salem and Monmouth for the next 10 days.
   
The International Youth Environmental Summit is the product of two innovative teachers, Andrew Goldstein and Molly Kellar. They are working with dedicated and talented students at South Salem High School and high schools in Brazil, Australia, Japan, Israel and South Africa.

For three years they've been organizing the conference. Students on different continents have worked together on environmental projects via the Internet. Now as many as 20 students from each of the six high schools are gathering in Oregon for face-to-face talks, environmental field trips and the opportunity to hear from authorities on a number of issues.

To describe the students' work as impressive is almost an understatement.

They have tackled immense issues and have come up with solid solutions, including a proposed declaration of environmental rights and responsibilities that they plan to take to their national governments and the United Nations.

 Each school has researched a separate topic. South Salem focused on corporate and social responsibility, South Africa on urbanization, Japan on energy resources, Israel on sustainable solutions to toxic waste, Brazil on deforestation and Australia on land degradation.

If this cooperative learning and international attention to global issues can be replicated by other schools, then our future is in good hands.

South Salem teachers Kellar and Goldstein have received a $34,000 Christa McAuliffe Fellowship to do just that, showing schools around the country how to create an international cyberclassroom using their framework of the 21st Century Schoolhouse.

The students have put their science, social studies, language and other courses to real-life use. They have discovered that compromises are necessary to create workable solutions to environmental problems.

They've shown how the Internet can unite the world and make education more exciting. And they have performed the extraordinary task of handling the logistics for an international conference.

They truly have created the 21st Century Schoolhouse.

Summit activities
 

The 21st Century Schoolhouse's International Youth Environmental Summit begins today.

 Students will stay at Western Oregon University in Monmouth. A number of sessions will be at the Oregon Capitol in Salem.

Several events are free to the public:

The opening ceremony will be at 7:30 p.m. Monday at Smith Auditorium at Willamette University. Speakers include David Brower, 84, chairman of the Earth Island Institute and founder of Friends of the Earth.

Committee work sessions of the 120 student delegates will be at 1 p.m. Tuesday and 8 a.m. Wednesday and Thursday in Capitol hearing rooms.

The closing ceremony will be at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Smith Auditorium. Adam Werbach, the 24-year-old president of the Sierra Club, will speak.

Students will have a variety of field trips, conduct a beach cleanup and hike in the Opal Creek area. They will leave Oregon on Sept. 15.

The next summits will be in Australia in 1999 and in Israel in 2001.

For information about the conference, call 363-8187 or visit its World Wide Web site: www.viser.net/gs21/

 The web site includes links to the students' research, related web sites and students' proposed articles for the declaration of rights and responsibilities.