A Model UN Winter Experience

Many of our students at YHIMS had expressed an interest in international politics, including a desire to someday become diplomats... 

To encourage students to explore this more, building a Model UN program for our school was a no-brainer. At the time of its conception, I and one other teacher were the only ones in the school who had any prior experience with Model UN. We took it upon ourselves to build a 1 week intensive Model UN Program which would take place during winter vacation. This program would introduce students to Model UN and give them a preview of what competitions might look like if they chose to pursue it further in high school. We created the program from scratch throughout 2019 with the intention of debuting the program in the February of 2020. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and we had to delay the program. At that time, sadly, my co-organizer also left YHIMS. 

Throughout 2020, I further revised the 2019 materials and made adjustments to the program to ensure that COVID-19 regulations could be followed. Throughout December 2020, I trained the 7 teachers who would be running the workshop classes, and in January 2021, we finally launched our Model UN Winter Experience Program. 

For the program to run, the creation of the following materials was required: a 113 page student workbook, a 133 page teacher training manual, and all of the materials/lesson plans for 9 workshop classes and for 5 debate simulations.  I was responsible for the training of 7 teachers who had never heard of Model UN before in how to run both the workshop classes and the debated simulations. Our team ran two councils simultaneously, with students who had also never experienced Model UN prior to our camp. Given the level of technical procedure everyone, teachers and students alike, had to master for a council session to be successful, this was quite the feat! A total of 48 students participated in January 2021, and each council was able to successfully debate and pass a resolution/recommendation for their respective councils by the end of the week. Starting in 2022, the camp reached max capacity, with 56 students signing up to participate.  

From 2021 onward, I have been responsible for annually updating and revising the materials for the Model UN Winter Experience, training teachers, recruiting students and hosting the event. Held each year during the winter vacation, this program has become one of the most successful and anticipated events for YHIMS students.