From global hunger to the world's water crisis, middle school students at New Jersey's West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District spend the last few days of the school year problem solving about the planet's most dire issues. With the Global Challenge, the school district's administrators not only want to implement an interesting and dynamic…

Critical thinking alone is reactive, in that it lacks the creative elements necessary for social progress. Accordingly, the author has developed the CoRT (Cognitive Research Trust) program to teach the two aspects of perception: breadth (developing a perceptual map) and change (using the map to discover solutions). (TE)