Establishing a Moscow-Florida Middle School Cross-Cultural Linkage for Global Environmental Collaboration.

To prepare students for the 21st century, students must be taught not only how to think, but also to think from a global perspective. As an extension of the Sister Schools Project of Dade County, Florida, this practicum centered on developing a Moscow-Florida, cross-cultural educational linkage between a school in Moscow, Russia, and a middle school in South Florida. Dealing with shared environmental concerns, Moscow and Florida teachers collaborated to develop curriculum resources, strategies, techniques and activities to identify common global environmental concerns and to find possible solutions to these concerns. A major joint identified concern was the effect of global ecological imbalance on human health and disease. Educators from both schools engaged students in the cognitive processing skills of critical and creative thinking and in exploring the affective areas of attitudes, feelings and values. After inservice training on the teaching strategies of critical thinking and creative thinking skills, Florida teachers demonstrated a 21 percent increase in the actual teaching of these skills. While unable to establish an on-line telecommunications system between the sister schools, the sharing of ongoing correspondence was accomplished through the conventional methods of letter writing, faxing, telephoning, and personal delivery from persons traveling between the two countries. The results of this sharing and research were videotaped in an Earth Summit simulation and a jointly produced newsletter which included results of community surveys, creative writings, cultural art, pen friend correspondence and research results. The significance of this practicum resulted in the implementation of a project among educators from two diverse cultures which demonstrates that mutual respect and understanding can be established by working on a common concern. Seventeen appendices include questionnaires and survey results. (Author/MDH)