What do you get when you cross pancake batter, digital cameras, K-8 students, Fair Trade products and the Saturday before Thanksgiving?

Answer: a Fair Trade sale and pancake breakfast at Salmon Bay Elementary and Middle School on Saturday, Nov. 22. Adults are looking forward to Pura Vida coffee samples while students are already jostling over who gets to flip the pancakes.

I miss regularly mounting the grand stairways of the former James Monroe building that houses Salmon Bay School on N.W. 65th. The stairs are so worn that that they indent like pillows that have been slept on. At each floor landing there is a bank of windows with a vista on Ballard and beyond. I am always eager to visit and learn what new ways they are connecting academic learning with community building.

For several years the seventh and eighth graders have used educational curriculum provided by the Heifer International Project to learn basic economics and trade, particularly the concept of Fair Trade in which workers are also company owners. Team teachers incorporate the history and culture of Latin and South America by focusing on three major imports, coffee, bananas and flowers. Given this curriculum the idea of a Fair Trade Fair seemed a logical extension for fundraising, plus a pancake breakfast because they've been successful in the past ($5/person, $20/family). The fundraising is to allow the school to participate again this year in a program called Bridges to Understanding.

In Melanie Shelton's third floor classroom the seventh and eighth students spend homeroom creating coffee timelines and telling me about their experiences with exchange students in the Bridges of Understanding project. On the other side of a connecting door Connie Gold is shocked to learn that half of her students hate bananas. It's a step on the way to exploring the dynamics of trade; within a few days the student will be much more expert as they staff their Fair Trade Fair. In typical Salmon Bay fashion the teachers and students will be combining social studies, community service, fundraising and borrowed pancake griddles.

The fundraising goal is $2,000, which will provide seventh/eighth grade students with guidance on the international project called Fotokids that allows young people to create and share digital self-portraits. Fremont-based Bridges to Understanding teaches student's photography skills and how to create digital stories that can be exchanged with students in countries such as Uganda, Guatemala, Brazil and India. The premise is deceptively simple. Put digital cameras and microphones into the hands of students, teach them how to use them and how to edit their images and comments into electronic self-portraits, of themselves, their village, their passions. Students at participating American schools (more commonly high schools) meet students through their cultural self-portraits and then through actual student exchanges.

Close-ups of faces of teenagers in South Africa, Uganda and Guatemala are in a display case across the hall from lockers on the third floor. On the Bridges website their longer stories are part of a story gallery. Local students have created digital stories about Tent City, graffiti, vegetarianism and animal rights. Students in other countries have explored the after effects of a hurricane, pollution and life in exile. The digital stories serve as introduction; students continue the dialogue through email exchanges.

Melanie Shelton first visited Guatemala in 1992. She has always looked for ways to incorporate a sense of social justice and cultural connections into her teaching, trying to bridge the very different worlds of American teenagers with children living by the slums in Guatemala City. Meanwhile Salmon Bay School also tries to create bridges between the elementary school (K-5) and the middle school (6-8) while simultaneously trying to span neighborhood boundaries and socio-economic differences.

In homeroom it's the girls who volunteer to create a bead activity for younger children on Saturday while both girls and boys wave their hands in hopes of holding a spatula. The eighth graders are the first to volunteer for the Bridges of Understanding table, one student mentioning that she is still in contact with a girl from Tibet who stayed with her family last year. Parents are working on publicity, students are working on signage and will man tables to sell Guatemalan textiles, Beads for Life, Theo chocolates and take orders for Pura Vida coffee. The pancake breakfast will run from 9 - 11 a.m. - the fair from 9 a.m. - 3 p.m.

The fundraising goal for Saturday is just $2,000 - enough to pay for the Bridges of Understanding team to work with the students on photography, sound recording and editing. Anything extra will go toward acquiring cameras and better microphones. "The sound portion is very challenging," Melanie told me. Not taking into account the cost of supplies or any proceeds from the Fair Trade Fair, they'll need 400 takers for pancakes in the cafeteria/auditorium between 9 - 11 a.m.

On the Bridges to Understanding Web site, founder Phil Borges asks, "What would happen if we gave indigenous children a voice and connected them to American children on a platform that allowed an equal exchange? What would happen if we gave children a platform where they can learn directly from and with each other, not just about each other? And what if that platform allowed them to share and discuss the daunting issues that face us all: environmental degradation, physical and spiritual poverty and the intolerance that results from not sharing understanding and not being understood?"

It seems worth the cost of a plate of pancakes to allow students the chance to answer those questions and sample the Fair Trade coffee while you're at it.

Peggy Sturdivant writes a series on neighborhoods for CrossCut.com and also writes additional pieces for the Seattle PI's Neighborhood Webtown: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/ballard/ Her e-mail is atlargeinballard@yahoo.com