Model United Nations

As I have described it, the notion of INTER-National education has few true analogues.  However, I beleive that Model United Nations (MUN), both as an after school club and as an online opportunity, is one of the best means of helping students to grow as communicators, global citizens, and creative problem identifiers and solvers.   It is something, as an educator, I am personally invested in and I see it as a true model for the future of educational constucts.

 

While MUN looks different the world around, the basic premise remains simple.  Students are tasked with providing solutions to real-world problems, but to do so, they must take on the view point of a specific nation and they must work with students from all over the world.  In a typical MUN conference you might see students from America debating with students from Colombia and Japan, while each of these students is taking on the mindset of a compltely different nation.  Because of this, the debates they have, pull in not only personal perceptions about the issue, but the perceptions these students have about the country they represent. In other words, the amount of different points of view floating through one room is extraordinary. Throughout the conference students wade through these different ideas and explore how they all can work together to create a truly enduring solution.  MUN demonstrates the power of creating INTER-National classrooms to allow students to work with people from around the world to fix the world's problems.  

 

For more information on MUN,  please visit the webiste I have designed for the middle school program I work in at Taipei American School.  Likewise, this video clip presents student and teacher points of view about an the MUN conference held at Taipei American School.