Step-by-Step  International School Procedure                                                

1. Initial Contact

The Youth Urban Agenda office has made initial contacts with international schools.  During the teacher training we have had responses from more than 50 Southeastern Michigan educators interested in international school linkages.  The Urban Agenda Office will contact teachers in order to help make these linkages operational.  After teachers have provided information to the Urban Agenda International Program Director about their school, a match will be made between the local Southeastern Michigan School and an international educational institution. 

2. Communication strategies

Once linkages have been made, step-by-step, school-to-school procedures emerge.  Email addresses are exchanged and follow-up discussions between teachers, vital to the development of the project, are established.  During this stage, steps are taken by local teachers to explain and enter into discussions with their partners about what civic literacy is and how it has been accomplished in other established international school-to-school projects.  Discussions may include explanation of: 1) The Five Questions 2) Plato and the Cave 3) The Twenty-Four Folkways 4) The Needs-Demand-Response Model 5) How Civic Literacy Fits Within the Curriculum 6) The Agenda Building Process

3. Parallel Process

A timeline is put into play, the purpose of which is to keep the schools outside the U.S. on a parallel track of involvement.  International partner educators work with their students on the following issues:

Unmonitored student communication (ongoing throughout the project)

The Five-Questions/Agenda Building

The Five Levels of Agenda Building-school; community; local; state/region; national/international 

The Twenty-Four Folkways

NDR Steps

Exchange Trip Planning including Fundraising Strategies

Exchange/Visit of Students to Partner School  

4.Exchange of Students

Visits and exchanges have occurred through the International School to School Project for the past several years.  Delegations of students and teachers from Page Middle School in Madison Heights , Michigan visited Siberia twice and students from Siberia visited their partner school in Madison Heights and participated in the International Youth Urban Agenda at Wayne State University .  There have also been exchanges between River Rouge High School in Michigan and students from four high schools and two universities in South Africa .  These students also attended the October 2000 convention at Wayne State .  Additional exchanges and visits by international delegations to the convention occurred between schools in Honduras and Academy of the Americas in Detroit, Wardak Province School in Afghanistan with Meads Mill Middle School in Northville, and the University of Zagreb in Croatia with Wayne State University.

In addition, and related to the above exchanges, the following goals for the School to School International Youth Urban Agenda Civic Literacy Project have been developed:   

Goal #1.  Facilitation of the civic literacy process in schools abroad wherever possible and participation by U.S. and international partners in the agenda building process.

Goal #2.  Creation of a small core group of students who have visited the international partner school and who are willing to continue teaching civic literacy and coordinate efforts in other classes within their own schools when they return home, as well as continue to communicate with students in their international partner schools.