A Day of Learning – Model UN Style
As the Model UN coach/advisor for Salisbury High School I am blessed to work with some of the brightest minds in our school. Kids who have a passion for international affairs, finding solutions, and discussing in a formal setting with their peers are part of our organization. We a relatively small school (10th -12th grades with approx. 475 students) with a relatively small Model UN team (approx. 25-30 students) and while we may be small – we try to be mighty. We bring together kids from varying backgrounds with varying skill sets and put them in 5 competitions each year. Our competition schedule begins in November with Wyomissing Area High School. We then go to KUMUNC at Kutztown University, NAIMUN hosted by Georgetown University (4 days), JHUMUNC hosted by Johns Hopkins University (4 days) and finally we finish our season at DeSales University. My students love every competition we enter and they thrive on the work done in the various committees and the new friends – from all over the world – that they meet.
Model UN students are given a country to represent and a committee on which to serve. Each committee is given two issues to examine and research. Students write position papers prior to the competition and must truly represent their country’s views on each issue. You can imagine that it is tough to represent China or Sudan when the issue before the committee is human rights. The views you speak on in committee may in stark contrast to the views that you personally hold dear. That is the way the game is played and the judging is done. There are formal rules to the debate and parliamentary procedure must be followed during the committee sessions so students learn proper discussion tactics. Of course, the goal of each committee is to ultimately write a resolution that is to be voted on by members and passed if it sustains a majority vote. Any Model “UNer” will tell you that this is not as easy as it sounds.
This past week our team traveled to Wyomissing High School, outside of Reading, PA and attended a training session that their coaches present for over 100 students. This training is an invaluable resource to first and second year players as they learn parliamentary procedure, current world issues, history of the actual United Nations, how to write a resolution, strategy to the game (and it is a game), and finally participate in a mini-mock UN conference. Wyomissing and a couple of other schools faced the challenge of having to justify to administrators why this training is not only important, but necessary. Teachers are being told that this type of day where students miss their traditional classes is detrimental to “test scores” that will come later in the year. This is nonsense. When are we going to realize that this type of learning, engagement, excitement, collaboration, communication, writing, listening, speaking, and problem-solving truly embraces 21st century skills. The kids who were fortunate enough to attend the training and further attend competitions later this year will benefit far beyond their years in school because they are developing skills that will be put to use as they proceed through their greatest challenge — life.
