Introduction

For one whole month, students researched and prepared for a 2 day conference that would be discussing the Syrian Refugee Crisis. Majority of students were assigned a country to represent during the conference, meaning they had to do a lot of research. While others worked ahead of time to start preparing for the setup of the conference. Sophomore classes were split into different committees. Committees 1-6. I was a part of Committee 2. In each room, there was a Chair and Co-chair who would lead the conference, sometimes a page and the delegates. My role in this project was a Page. A page was practically an assistant for the Chair. I would pass notes that delegates would write one another and assist the chair in anyway possible. Since I was one of the MUN leaders, I didn't have to do the same work that the other students did.

Learning Goals

• Why the Syrian Refugee Crisis is happening
• How the world is responding to it
• What we can learn from refugee crises in the past
• Who the “United Nations” is and what they do

MUN INTRODUCTION PRESENTATION

This presentation was one of the first ones we did. We presented these presentations to our committee so that way students know who would they be working with during the conference. We also played an ice breaker game so students were able to introduce themselves to one another and so we were able to introduce ourselves to the students.

Mun Workshops

Since I was a part of the MUN Leadership team, a lot of the work that students did didn't apply to me. I mainly did the behind the scenes work. The MUN Mentors would create lesson plans and then we would present those lesson plans to either our class or my committee. We did a total of 3 workshops and each workshop explained different parts of MUN and what the students would be doing.

First Workshop - Procedures and Vocabulary

This was the first workshop we did. For this workshop, we talked about the procedures of MUN which was how the conference starts, what is going to be happening during the conference, and how the conference will come to an end. We also talked about basic MUN vocabulary so that way students were informed and used the appropriate language during the conference.

Second Workshop - Intro to Position Papers

The second workshop was entirely about position papers. Students had to write position papers about their countries opinion on the debate topic. The position paper was split up into 6 different parts:

• Heading
• Opening Statement
• National Actions
• UN Actions and International Actions
• Recommendation for Action (Resolution)
• Websites and Research Resources / Works Cited

With all the research that the students gathered, they would use it to help them write their position paper.

Third Workshop - Mock Conference

This is the last and final workshop we did. This workshop was basically to help students get ready for the real conference. The MUN Leadership picked a topic that they thought all countries could relate to. The topic:
"A disease outbreak caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis has begun in Italy, and has been rapidly spreading to its bordering countries. It has the potential to spread to the Middle East. The disease seems to be airborne. Work together to create a plan to effectively deal with this crisis"
I think that having a mock conference was a good way to get students ready for the real thing so they at least get an idea of what the real conference was going to look like.

Experience of Conference

As I've mentioned before, since I was part of the MUN Leadership team, I didn't have to debate like other students did. Instead, I was watching students debate. I am very proud of my committee and how they were able to pass 3 resolutions! I think that the delegates in my committee were great and I enjoyed watching them represent their assigned country. If I were to do MUN again, I would like to be a chair. Even though being a chair can be a lot of pressure, I think that leading a debate would be a new and fun experience for me. After hearing a lot of students opinions, I think that giving students more research time would be very helpful. They were only given 2 weeks to research, and I think they should have been given more time. It never hurts to have lots of information. Given more time, I think students could've been more prepared and have a better understanding of what their countries take on refugees were.