MME Students and Gina Nelson

Our program on March 26^th was a presentation by a group of students from Minnetonka Middle School East. Their teacher, Gina Nelson, had the students in her 7^th grade history class participate in “World Savvy”, an academic program that engages students in world issues.

“World Savvy” is a program designed to bring the issue of sustainable communities to the attention of middle-schoolers. Currently, the program is offered in San Francisco, New York, and Minneapolis. The idea is to have the students become responsible global citizens who can thrive in the 21^st century.

Her students broke up into teams, and each team researched an issue, and developed solutions for that problem. They also were required to develop an action plan to address the issue in their own home community. The 4 teams who came to our meeting gave us their presentations on these topics: child labor, carbon emissions from industry, water sanitation, and clean water.

This is the 3^rd year for the program at MME, and 4 of the school’s teams advanced to the regional competition at Macalester; one of the MME teams won 1^st place in the competition, the best of the 23 schools I the competition.