School News

Breaking Down Borders with Citizen Diplomacy: Model United Nations at Fayerweather

12/10/2020

Michael Bowler, Assistant Head of School

I surveyed the Zoom room on our first call, counting...One, Two, Three...Seven. Six students and one teacher. I knew it was going to be special at that moment. Think about it: 7 continents, the 7 major summits of the world, 7 Days of the Week, 7 Harry Potter Novels. This was going to be a magical experience. And it was.

I was so excited to partner with six curious unit students this fall on a brand new program for Fayerweather, a Model United Nations Club. As a group, we attended 3 different conferences hosted by the United Nations Association of Greater Boston over Zoom. At these conferences, students were tasked with diplomatically solving challenges facing the world stretching over a wide range of important topics: climate change, indigenous people’s rights to education, the political and humanitarian crises in Yemen and Venezuela, and the militarization of space. The MSMUN (Middle School Model United Nations) Conference was notable because it was attended by over 400 students from 30 different schools from around the United States and internationally. I was so proud of the growth in confidence, knowledge and skill set that I saw from these six students as they interacted with globally minded peers from around the country. It really was magical. I think the magic of a Model United Nations program is particularly exciting for several reasons:

It fits perfectly with Fayerweather’s mission of producing socially aware and responsible citizens.
It teaches really important academic and life skills like research, perspective-taking, collaboration and communication/public speaking.
It cultivates citizen diplomacy. More on that later.
It further broadens the scope of a student’s educational experience with authentic community partnerships and relationships.

Let’s start with values and skills. One eighth grade student noted the opportunity that Model UN presented for applying the value of justice that a Fayerweather education had taught him, “Many of the topics [were about] injustice. When the topic was Indigenous people’s rights, we had the chance to attempt to fix the inequalities Indigenous people face. The delegates/countries never had equal [power], because richer countries had access to more resources. All this to say, Model UN gives you the opportunity to practice your beliefs of justice.” I think that is what we are looking for with our students. A chance for them to engage with a real world issue, in an authentic situation with peers from different schools, while growing their skills and their knowledge of the world that awaits them as adults. This kind of authentic engagement pushes students with real life practice of the collaboration and communication skills they have been working on in the Fayerweather classrooms. One of my students noted in a reflection that they were thankful for their Model UN experience because, “Teamwork has never come easy to me,” and another noted they were eager for more practice, “connecting and collaborating with others.” Almost all of my students noted their growth in public speaking thanks to Model UN, as well as the need to continue to expand that skill.

Many great and rewarding programs can produce the kind of skill growth and application of knowledge that occurs during Model UN. However, I do feel like what sets Model UN apart from most is its cultivation of citizen diplomacy, something that should be an essential competency for all middle and high school students. Rachel Bergsieker, a Program Associate at PYXERA Global, defines citizen diplomacy as “the concept that every global citizen has the right, even the responsibility, to engage across cultures and create shared understanding through meaningful person-to-person interactions.” Model UN is unique in that it promotes global fluency and, according to Bergsieker, “facilitates these cross-cultural interactions through debates on real-world issues in a simulated environment, aligning it with the broad objectives of citizen diplomacy.” Laying the groundwork for this essential competency in middle school truly sets students on the path to be the global changemakers we want to see here at Fayerweather.

I am so excited to expand upon this experience and grow the Model UN program here at Fayerweather. Sure, I’ll lose that magical number of 7 in the process, but something tells me I will find a way to make a bigger number seem pretty special too.

Back