One of the core elements of the LREI experience calls on students to go out into the world and be their best selves. In that spirit, our Model Congress team participated in the 25th Packer Collegiate Middle School Model Congress this past weekend. This year’s participants included sixth graders Alexa, Sylvie, and Willem; seventh graders Flynn, Graham, Layne, Louie, Ming, Nika, Olivia and River; and eighth graders Celia, Claire, Florence, Kiyomi, Renzo, Rose, Wilder. High school students and former middle school Model Congress members Chloe and Lauren served as a Parliamentarian and a Chairperson respectively and helped to coordinate the event. The group has worked with faculty facilitator Sharyn Hahn since the end of October to write bills, prepare speeches, read bills written by students from the other participating schools, and learn about and practice parliamentary procedure. The team spent the entire day this past Saturday at Packer Collegiate High School for the annual culminating Model Congress event.Nearly 200 middle school students from 13 area independent schools, including LREI, sent delegations of legislators to the event. When students arrived at the event, they broke off into one of 17 separate committees based upon the content of their bills. These committees are modeled after actual congressional committees and include among others Judiciary, Education, Health, Housing & Urban Affairs, and Science Space & Technology. After a morning committee session that was filled with heated debate and criticism, the bills that passed through their committees were reviewed in one of four full sessions. (House I, House II, Senate I and Senate II). As facilitator Sharyn Hahn reports:
The 18 LREI delegates, one of our biggest groups to date, drafted bills on a range of controversial topics the titles of which appear below.
- An act to ban the sale of cigarettes and other tobacco products from pharmaceutical facilities.
- An Act to Ban Stop and Frisk in all 50 states.
- An Act to Ban Smoking on Public Sidewalks.
- An act to make illegal investments by private companies in order to alter the legislative process in local and federal government bodies.
- An act to reduce or limit the cost of cancer drugs.
- An act to reduce construction-site work hours in residential areas.
- An act to reduce pollution by minimizing the number of plastic bags used by consumers in all types of stores.
- An Act to allow minors to legally and safely have an abortion without requiring a guardian's signature.
- An act to require professional bartenders to be the minimum age of 21.
We had a very successful day at the Packer Collegiate Model Congress, which was the result of the significant time and energy that went into all of the well-prepared, confident, and interesting presentations. I was extremely proud of our delegates. Our bills were represented in various morning session committees with each committee comprised of up to 20 delegates from all of the participating schools from the tri-state area. Seven of our nine bills were passed in these morning House and Senate sub-committees after debates and caucusing took place. At the end of the morning session, the delegates from all of the schools in each committee voted for the most interesting and controversial bill to move on to the Plenary, or full, session. Two of our bills were voted to move to the Plenary session. This was very exciting and our delegates were thrilled and supportive of each other. After lunch, the committees merged into larger groups, and the winning bills were debated again amongst new peers, as well as members of previous committees. Layne and Ming in the 7th grade and Celia and Flo in the 8th grade presented very convincing arguments in the Plenary session, and their bills passed there as well, which was very exciting. They received a gold seal on their bills at the awards ceremony. In addition, Rose, Celia and Ella received Honorable Mention awards at the concluding ceremony. The winners were chosen by the Chairperson and Parliamentarian of each of the respective House/Senate meetings.
In preparation for the Model Congress event, many members of the team also participated in the recent Model UN event in which students had to navigate through a variety of international crisis simulations.
Congratulations to all of the members of the Model Congress and Model UN teams! And congratulations to the members of the Middle School Chorus and Band who participated in Monday's most excellent Spring Concert. In the spirit of celebrating our best work, congratulations also to all of the middle schoolers who had work featured in our award-winning literary magazine IE, which features writing and artwork from students in grades seven though twelve, and to those who read their work at last Friday's Lit Mag Coffeehouse. This year's edition is an excellent read and copies will be forthcoming to all families. Finally, a reminder that tomorrow is Field Day. Students should come in their class colors and with a bagged lunch (no nuts, seeds or glass bottles).
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