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Ann Miron, a senior at Forest Lake High School, says traveling to China is a great honor and great opportunity. (MPR Photo/Tim Pugmire)

Seven high school seniors are heading to China as part of Gov. Pawlenty's six-day, four-city trade mission. These hand-picked student ambassadors will produce daily reports about their experiences and the activities of the state delegation. A special Web site will offer lessons about China to students back home.

Hugo, Minn. — Business is the focus of any trade mission, but Gov. Pawlenty's trip to China will also pay a lot of attention to education. Educators, like business people, know that China is too big to ignore.

Ann Miron, who lives with her family on a dairy farm just outside of Hugo, is interrupting her senior year to join the governor's delegation to China. Miron is an honor student at Forest Lake High School and is active in Future Farmers of America.

She describes the trip as a once in a lifetime opportunity.

"I've never really gone anywhere before," Miron said. "I've only been on a plane one other time. I mean to go to China with the governor and experience the Chinese culture and be able to talk with prominent business people from Minnesota and to just be able to go there is a great honor and a great opportunity for someone my age."

State officials selected Miron and six other high-achieving students last summer to serve as student ambassadors during the trade mission. The students' main job is to produce educational content for an interactive Web site created specifically for the trip.

"We'll have our daily blogs," Miron said. "Each day we'll write our experiences and what we've learned. And we also have to make a movie about our specific thread, mine being agriculture."

Once in China, the large Minnesota trade delegation will spilt up into smaller groups. A student ambassador will document the activity of each group and its area of interest, such as agriculture, education, government or healthcare.

Priya Sury of Falcon Heights is going too. She's a senior at Roseville Area High School with an interest in health care.

"I'm going to a hospital in Shanghai, so I think that will be really interesting for me since I do want to study biomedical engineering," she said.

She's an experienced international traveler who's anxious to see China. Sury is assigned to the government delegation.

"I'll be attending a couple of meetings with Gov. Pawlenty, so I'll just be interested to see what goes on in that sort of setting," Sury said. "I think the students of Minnesota will also be interested in hearing about that a little bit."

If Sury and the other student ambassadors need help with their blogs or video production, they can turn to the man hired to direct the state's Web site project. Nick Buettner developed a similar educational tool in 1999 when then-Gov. Ventura led a trade mission to Japan. That trip did not include students.

Buettner says several schools, including Forest Lake High School, plan to follow the daily activity of this trade mission. He said others will make use of a China-focused curriculum.

"We've tried to create the Web site in such a way that the learning activities can be done at any time," Buettner said. "The live piece is an important part of it, but with the curriculum and all the different tools that we put on line, it can actually be used isolated from the trade mission. It can be used anytime that a teacher is trying to teach anything having to do with China."

Three school district superintendents are also going on the China trip. They too are looking for future educational opportunities. Debra Bowers of the St. Louis Park school district says she wants to lay the groundwork for some long-term relationships with Chinese educators.

"If you expect to just go over and have instant relationships, it's not going to happen. It's about going, providing an invitation, doing follow up and then also finding out what they want from us," Bowers said. "Are they interested in pen pal programs? How can we help them accomplish their educational goals as well? And we would be very agreeable to trying some things out."

The Minnesota Association of School Administrators is paying a portion of the superintendents' expenses. Corporate sponsors are picking up the full tab for the student ambassadors.