For the past several years the Open Society Institute and the U.S. Embassy in Prague have co-sponsored a summer institute held at Palackù University in Olomouc, Czech Republic. Directed by Ivana Mrozkova, attendees include high school students from several Eastern European countries who are interested in dialogue about various public issues that transcend the borders of their nations.

For the past two summers, Civitas partners in Colorado (CELD) and in the Czech Republic (Association for Education to Citizenship and Democracy--SVOD) have participated in these institutes.

This past summer, Civitas partners CELD and SVOD arranged for Colorado high school teacher Suzanne deLemos to collaboratively teach the two-week global issues course with Dana Fialova, an English teacher from the Czech Republic. They used a variety of civic education strategies and materials to motivate students to think about global issues and also apply what they learned as citizens of an emerging democracy. Suzanne and Dana's syllabus for the two week course on global issues is posted here. To highlight the collaborative nature of this professional experience, two lessons that were team taught by Suzanne and Dana are also posted here in pdf format: