About 100 teen-agers from six countries formally opened their International Youth Environmental Summit on Monday in Salem.

The students--from Australia, Brazil, Israel, Japan, South Africa and the United States--worked during and after school to research environmental topics and raise money for a first-time, face-to-face meeting in this unusual global classroom.

Now, they will work through Friday at the Oregon Capitol while getting to know one another better outside committee work sessions.

The students' goal is to agree on a slate of environmental resolutions they will present to their governments and the United Nations.

Andrew Goldstein and Molly Kellar, South Salem High School teachers, also hope that the concept of the 21st Century Schoolhouse catching on in other schools.

Their work started two school years ago when they visited the first of the five foreign schools to discuss common curriculum goals on environmental issues and to lay groundwork for the summit.

Schools gradually came on-line via computer. Students last year even published "The Global Echo" magazine.

By the time they convened Saturday, at least some of them had met on-line. Now, as they meet in person, students are excited about everything from new friendships to helping change the world.

"We want to do stuff so when we go home, we'll get noticed by the government," said Marissa Skeels, a student at Warnbro Community High School in Perth, Australia.

She and Keah Paxton, a classmate from Australia, said they spent at least eight months, on holidays, weekends and after school, studying land degradation. Interviews and test scores determined who would be a member of their country's 17-person delegation.

South African students gave a polished presentation on rapid urbanization and its environmental impact to their Parliament before making the trip to Salem.

Salem students worked into the wee hours since school started, putting together binders with each country's research and summit schedules.

"I think it's more like an awareness thing," Joy Harms of South Salem High School said of the summit. "To show we care, we're thinking and looking to the future."

The next summit, in 1999, will be in Australia.

On Saturday, the Australians arrived first, wearing athletic warm-up jackets donated by a sponsor, several days of traveling behind them.

"It was really great to see their faces," Paxton said of her Internet acquaintances.

The teens visited the Oregon coast Sunday for a beach cleanup day. The Salem students sang oldies on the way, and the Brazilians taught the group the Portuguese word for "awesome."

South African students, who left winter behind in West Cape, marveled at the all tidbits they picked up along the beach, everything from socks to mattresses.

"We got to see Free Willy," Paxton said in reference to Keiko, the movie star whale that is being rehabilitated in Newport for possible release in the wild. "We've always wanted to see him."

On Monday, students played tag in groups and walked in pairs, one of them wearing a blindfold. The outdoor games, held at Western Oregon University where the students are housed, were designed to build trust and friendship.

Students have traded information about their cultures; sampled strange food at an international banquet, where virtually no one recognized even their country's dishes; and learned about currency exchange, roughly translated to parents as "I need more money."

They discussed whose country has the largest middle class, how much students outside of South Africa know about apartheid and who knows what dances.

Most everyone speaks some English, although Japanese and Portuguese interpreters are on hand for work sessions.

Liron Ben-Yakov of Negev, Israel, tried her first peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich (normally it's straight peanut butter), and Isabela Moreira Azoubel of Brazil plans to teach the samba to new friends during a dance this evening.

They are optimistic about their opportunities to solve environmental problems.

Moreira Azoubel said the multinational perspective will be valuable. Ben-Yakov said, "Because we are young, we look at life from a different perspective."

If all goes as planned, the foreign teen-agers will leave Salem on Monday with ideas about corporate and social responsibility, visual images of the Opal Creek old-growth forest they will visit and addresses of some enduring pen pals.

All should return home knowing a line dance.