Model United Nations Training Webinar Notes

hello everyone and welcome I see people joining us now popping in from all over the country and all over the world thank you so much for joining us this evening I am super excited to have everyone here my name is Laura Beth Goldsmith and I'm the executive director of Partnerships at best style yet and tonight we are going to be doing a training webinar on how to prepare for your first or next model U.N conference depending upon your own background and experience and I'm really excited to share these Resources with ever run to help everyone kick off a great Model United Nations year together and before we get started I'd love to get a little bit of an idea of who we have here with us this evening so if you don't mind please drop into the chat if you're on the session live with us tonight your name where you're from if you're a student teacher or parent and what you're hoping to learn from this webinar I got a few messages from some of you earlier today sharing how you were starting a new model un club and really needed to to get a solid understanding of what to do and I got a couple of messages with specific questions about upcoming conferences in October so I'm excited to help everyone get prepared and if you are willing to share and introduce yourself please feel free to do so hi welcome I see we have a middle school teacher here with us from Chicago another great teacher here with us from Texas starting a new model un program at their school great to hear Carrie welcome from Miami Florida I'm also down in Florida I'm in Sarasota Florida this evening um great some more students here looking to learn about public speaking skills and how to prepare for conferences that's awesome to see I also see some students from New York and from Florida and from around the world oh we've got a teacher from Honduras hi welcome we've worked with many schools in Honduras before great to have you here so it is awesome to see that we have students teachers administrators and I see a couple of parents here as well looking to learn really how to prepare for model un conferences and I see people have questions about public speaking some questions about preparation in general some questions about research so we'll definitely do our best to help you understand what model un is and how to prepare for conferences awesome I see some parents that have students doing model un for the first time either as middle school or high school students that's great to see and a couple more teachers joining us from all over the world fabulous well I am really excited to help all of you prepare and as we jump in I want to tell you just a little bit about myself I've been doing model un for over 17 years now and I started as a student and in high school I got really into model un at one of my first conferences I got to hear the Secretary General at the time ban ki-moon speak and I was really inspired to see how countries can come together to solve Global issues and I was very excited in college to also continue doing Molly on I actually picked my University Emory University because when I visited the school I stayed stayed with someone from the model un team and I just felt so welcome that at home and like it was part of my community and where I really belonged so I was president and head delegate of the model un program at Emory University where I studied political science and community building and social change and then I got my Master's in management through Harvard University and I'm really passionate about global issues and about teaching and helping people understand diversity and different perspectives about complex Global issues I personally love to travel and I've been to more than 60 different countries in all seven continents and I love helping students broaden their own perspective about different countries so I'm very excited to get to share with you about maluan but enough about me let me share a little bit about best delegate as well best delegate is the world's leading Organization for teaching Model United Nations and we've been able to have a great impact on the model un community over the last 12 plus years and our resources have been viewed over 10 million times we've got a lot of great free resources like these webinars and resources that we provide online to help grow and build the model un Community we've also had people from over 100 different countries participate in our training programs and we deliver in-person workshops and conferences as well as virtual conferences workshops teams and clubs and our programs consistently have received a 4.8 out of 5 or better rating so we are really passionate about model un and very very excited to get to teach students about global issues and with that I want to tell you what to expect today we're going to do a brief overview of an awesome guide that we have that we just released the updated version of for 2023 today and it covers how to prepare for model un conferences whether you're attending an in-person or virtual conference it'll give you everything you need to get ready for that it includes a step-by-step checklist to help guide your student through preparing for a conference and once we go through that checklist I'll also take some time to answer your questions some of you submitted questions in advance and you're also welcome to drop questions into the chat throughout this event and we'll go through those at the end as well and then we'll share a lot of additional resources we have a ton of great assets to share with you some one-page cheat sheets and guides to model un uh longer assets for parents students and teachers and we have a fabulous member of our team here with us tonight Tony who will be managing the chat and dropping in many of those resources for you and if you're watching the recording after the fact we'll also have all of those links in the description of the event so for those of you that are new to model un I know we had a couple of parents with new students starting in October I just want to share what to expect in model un students really step into the shoes of world leaders and learn about issues facing different countries and how to solve them it will challenge their own perspective to think differently about problems that they may have a personal opinion on but to understand it from the perspective of different countries and and world leaders in model un they'll learn to navigate the world and they'll learn about public speaking and diplomacy and teamwork and problem solving and Leadership and advocacy and they'll also have a lot of fun doing it and find like-minded friends who care about global issues get to go through research debate negotiation public resolution writing and they'll get to take action on the issues at hand that they're discussing and so they'll also get to learn parliamentary procedure and they'll have the chance to learn how to give an opening speech as part of the speaker's list they'll have a chance to debate on different sub issues as part of a moderated caucus they'll also have the opportunity to build blocks and find allies during unmoderated caucuses to write resolutions with and will have the chance to present as part of a authors panel and answer people's questions on the draft resolutions they've created you'll also see them take action and vote on the global issues that they're addressing as well so over the course of an mun simulation they're going to get to go through all five of these stages of a model un simulation and we'll get to learn parliamentary procedure as well and so in order to participate in a model un simulation I definitely recommend downloading our new guide and Tony's going to drop the link for everyone in the chat as well so that you can go ahead and take a look at this document as well and it is a step-by-step guide for how to do model when you will get a copy of this recording if you want to see it as well as the guide so that you can utilize that with your model un clubs and it'll cover what happens at in-person conferences as well as what happens at virtual conferences and it will have a step-by-step checklist to help your students prepare for a mun conference and the first two steps that I recommend to anybody getting started with model un are to learn the basics the first thing is to read the new guide for preparing for model un conferences and it includes a lot of great information about model un itself The Next Step I'd recommend is to watch some of our training videos we've got training videos that have hundreds of thousands of views on what model un is how to create opening speeches all of these key assets that you might want to be teaching your students how to do we've got a video that you can play for them and then reinforce with activities that we recommend in this guide as well to help your students feel confident going into their first simulation and our team of best delegate really wants you to be able to have your students do model un without a ton of preparation for their first conference you might want to consider a novice or a local conference or a virtual training conference for students that are doing model un for the first time and then you'll have some conferences that they spend months preparing for like a National High School mun conference where they may spend 20 plus hours preparing for a conference but what I'm going to go over with you is how students can prepare in two hours or less for their first conference or their next conference and feel confident and ready to participate so the first thing that they're going to want to do when they find out that they're going to a conference is get their country assignment and read the background guide depending upon the conference they may or may not get those two things at the exact same time they might get it about a month before a conference if you're signing up for a best delegate virtual conference you'll find out your country uh close to the conference so like a month or so in advance but you'll know your topic as soon as you sign up so if you're signing up for a conference in March you'll already know what topic you're going to be debating at that point in time once you get your topic and your background guide as well as your assigned country you want to start by reading it and really read it end to end the person that wrote it most likely is the person that's chairing the committee so they are an expert in that topic and they want you to understand it going into that conference the next thing that you're going to want to do is do some additional research on the committee topic there's a lot of great assets already in the background guide but you'll want to dig just a little bit deeper to learn even more about that Global issue then the next step step five is to spend some time researching your country so you'll be assigned a country to represent and you'll want to really understand that country's government their point of view their policy on the issue that you're addressing and you'll want to spend 20 minutes or so to really get a key understanding of that piece and then you want to take some time to brainstorm your solutions to the global issues that you're addressing and you want to go into a conference with ideas for how you can solve the global issues you don't want to go in with a full pre-written resolution that's not allowed at most U.S conferences but you do want ideas in mind of how you'll solve those global problems then step seven is to rank your opening speech you'll want to spend 20 minutes or so preparing that speech before you attend and ideally practicing it in front of the mirror or with different people in your Club to help you feel confident before the conference that you're attending and then the final step step eight is to review how to write resolutions so that you can feel confident contributing with other students at this conference that you're attending and I see a question in the chat looking for the links to some of these resources uh Tony if you could double check the link for the preparing for conferences guide and make sure we drop that updated link that would be great and we'll also I'll also show everyone where it is on our website after we go through this checklist as well so let's imagine you have a conference that you are attending uh coming up in October and you are going to be on the UN social cultural and humanitarian committee your topic is natural disasters so you find that out and you want to start getting prepared for a conference or you find out that your students are the ones who are going to be participating in a conference with that topic so again you'll want to start by taking a look at that background guide and finding out what the country is that you're representing the background guide will typically have four key sections or five depending upon the conference for you to take a look at you'll start by understanding the topic background it'll have an introduction and some history on the topic for students to understand then you'll want to look at past International action what is the global Community done to address this issue so far then you'll want to think about what are the sub issues the topics that are related to the bigger topic that you want to be solving next you'll want to consider what are some of the different questions that I need to understand in order to solve the problem so these are some of the key elements that you're going to take a look at in the background guide then you'll want to take some time to research your committee topic specifically you're going to want to understand the topic itself and the problem that you're addressing you'll want to understand what's causing this problem is it a man-made problem is it something that's always existed what what's making it worse and exacerbating it you want to consider the effects of the problem at hand and then you'll want to consider the impacts and so that's the different things that you want to think about in regards to the topic research and also feel free to check the citations that are in the background guide because these citations have a direct links that will help you find out even more about the issue that you're you're understanding the next step step five is to research your country profile and Country policy there's a lot of great assets about out there to utilize one of them that I'd recommend checking out is the best delegate research map it's basically a Google map and you can click on the country that you are representing and it'll include a link to the CIA World Factbook it'll share information on where the country is located it'll give you the BBC country profile it'll tell you when they joined the UN and other key information and you can use that as a jumping off point some of the key things you'll want to know about your country include the government the allies of your country it's geography and its economy some of some of the key information that would be helpful to understand you can also take some time to research your country policy so that you know what you're representing so you might be discussing the issue of natural disasters and depending upon what country you're representing you may have a different opinion on the topic for example if you're representing a small island nation you may feel really strongly about you know reparations or funds to help rebuild the countries that are are sinking and underwater from natural disasters so in order to understand your country policy you're going to want to look for what's called Spears speeches programs events agreements and reports and we have an awesome two minute video online that covers how to find Spears so I'd recommend checking that out in our video library and we'll link to that in a few minutes but when you go to research I recommend doing something called Power searching and if you don't know this trick to navigate Google I definitely write this one down to power search you want to start by instead of just typing your topic and your country and searching the internet you want to start by making sure you're searching a specific website or credible source so for example I might choose to type into Google sitecolonun.org and then my country so let's say for argument's sake New Zealand and then I might put in something like the topic natural disasters and if I do that it gives me the chance to really really understand and find credible searches and you can see when you do that for this topic for example you're going to find things from the UN sustainable development you're going to find other things from the UN website that are just going to be far more useful and credible and I definitely recommend teaching it to your students Beyond model un as well hi Heather I see your comment in the chat I definitely recommend using it for students social studies and in research as well because it just helps them to navigate through a lot of the bias and a lot of the missing information on the internet as well so feel free to power search to find this information to understand your country policy and to read articles that are particularly relevant this is especially helpful for high school students or older middle school students some of the younger middle school students may start more with that background guide and may even depending upon the conference get some profile they might be given a profile on their country to help them get started as well so once you've done your initial research on your country policy you're going to want to start to brainstorm some solutions to the global idea and topic that you're addressing and specifically you'll want to start by thinking about key elements you'll look at the list of issues that you've identified and you'll use the spears those again those speeches and programs and events and agreements and reports to find solutions that you support you don't have to invent them all they can be existing programs that you want to build upon and enhance you'll also want to analyze how effective pre-existing Solutions are if they're things that you want to build upon or if you actually want to come up with new ideas to solve Global issues so as a student in model un you don't need to always come up with something entirely new or Innovative you can look at what's already happening and improve upon ideas or programs that exist so you want to take some time to brainstorm your Solutions and come in with a number of ideas on how to address the topic that you're looking at so you'll want to start by looking at the bigger issue so in this example natural disasters and that might lead you to try to understand different sub issues such as climate change or risk preparation and management and then you might start to brainstorm some additional pieces such as ideas that you have to address the problem and in this case one idea a student may have is sustainable storm barriers how do we create lobbies or barriers to prevent hurricanes and other natural disasters from having the full impact that they often do on communities so you'll take some time to brainstorm your Solutions which can ultimately help you to create your resolutions but before you get to resolutions once you have some Solutions in mind you'll want your students to prepare their opening speech for a conference you always want to go in with the speech pre-written so that you feel confident to First engage with the committee and something that you've already created most conferences you'll have the opportunity to give a one-minute speech it could be as short as 45 seconds or as long as two minutes but typically you'll see about a one minute speaking time for an opening speech and in that opening speech there's three key things that you're going to want your student to include to have a well-structured speech and that is a hook a point and an action and if you've attended any of our best delegate events you've probably heard this many times before but you want to start by hooking everyone in and grabbing their attention a good hook might include a quote a statistic a question or a very short story that piques everyone's interest and brings them in so if you're talking about natural disasters you may have a statistic about how many people have lost their homes because of natural disasters or you may have a quote about somebody that lived through a horrific hurricane or a natural disaster that impacted them so say something quick that gets everyone's attention and relates to the key point that you're trying to make and in a mun opening speech your point is to share your country's policy briefly and concisely you should have a clear one sentence main point and you can include two to three supporting points but a lot of students try to speed read and fit way way too much into an opening speech and it's much better to say one thing really well that everyone will remember came from your delegate than to try to say many many things poorly so I would make make the time to have that key thing a really stand out effectively as your main message the next thing I'd recommend is your action and this is what you want people to do after they hear your speech so you'll want to tell them either a physical action to do like meeting you during the next unmoderated caucus or passing a note or a way to support the policy that you're recommending so you want to be specific and get people excited and with that you can give a great opening speech and I would definitely recommend having students prepare that and if you have a regular club meeting having them deliver those speeches for other students and get feedback and critique it so that they feel really comfortable and confident going into their conference so again the three key parts of that opening speech that you want them to prepare are their hook their point and their action and as they're preparing that speech they should Target about one minute in length and ideally you don't want them to have to like read directly off of a paper looking down but instead feel confident to be able to deliver that maybe glancing down at a few bullet points or notes but just really having a general idea of what they're going to say in advance with that hook point and key action so that is their opening speech another key thing that students often feel like they don't know how to do going into their first mun conference is how to write a resolution so this is definitely something that I recommend reviewing with your students and essentially there's three key parts to a resolution you have your header you have your preambulatory Clauses and you have your operative Clauses so your header is that top part of a document it includes the committee name it includes the topic it includes the sponsors so those are the key people that are writing it sometimes you'll often have you may have signatories as well depending upon the conference that just means people that want to see the document introduced and debated doesn't mean they're ultimately going to vote for it but that may be something that you also see in a header so the header is just that top section of the document not controversial at all I recommend putting the sponsors in alphabetical order so there's not even any fighting over who goes first either and that is that top element the next part of your resolution is your preambulatory Clauses and these describe the issues that your resolution will tackle or past International actions and it may reference specific existing resolutions on this topic and if in order to format these you'll essentially want to start each of these with an italicized first word and end each of them with a comma interestingly a UN resolution is actually one giant sentence so each of these has a comma at the end of it and it's not till the very end of your operative Clauses that you'll actually have a period so pay attention to that formatting a little bit and when we give you some of the resources you'll also see some Solutions on there as well so operative Clauses these contain your ideas and your group's ideas to solving the topic that your committee is addressing in terms of formatting the first word is underlined each of them ends in a semicolon except for the very very last operative clause which ends in a period and they're numbered so an example might be recommends that member states create adaptive natural disaster preparedness plans a bad one but in reality you'll probably want it to be even more detailed as you work together with other students so that's an example of an operative clause and uh you you've got this you can learn to write resolutions I'll share that was the very very brief overview of the three sections of a resolution but we actually have in our uh on our website in our video library we've got some full video resources on how to write resolutions as well as all the key terms that you need to create resolutions and with that I want to leave a good amount of time uh to go through some of your questions so again we've got this checklist you'll want to go through the eight steps with your students to help them feel prepared going into a conference and you'll want them to really be ready to go through those five stages of a model un simulation and you'll also want to cover a little bit of the Parliamentary procedure with them and ideally do a practice simulation but even if you don't get the chance to do a practice simulation if they're attending a training conference or a novice or local conference for their first conference this will give them the chance to get more confident and build up repetitions while working with chairs that are comfortable student leaders or you know facilitators that want to help them understand how to do model un because at the end of the day you want their first conference experience to be a really positive one where they feel confident participating and learning with one another and now I want to spend some time on your questions and one of the questions that I found in the chat and I just want to make sure everyone is able to find is that resource guide and all the other resources that are available from best delegate so if you go on the bestdelegate.com website there is an awesome page of student model un resources and it's split up by different areas one of those areas is how to prepare for guides and one of those guides is our new how to prepare for virtual and in-person model un simulations and we also have our easy to use checklists so we've got checklists our one page cheat sheet to model un we have checklists on how to run mun simulations checklist on how to chair resources for what to do in model un every year you're participating and a lot more so definitely check out this page it has a lot of great assets including the 2023 edition of the how to prepare for conferences guide and here's a look at it if you haven't checked it out yet it's pretty comprehensive it's a 24-page guide that should make it as easy as possible for you to prepare your delegates it'll cover what model un is it includes key terms and what happens at conferences it includes that checklist and how to prepare include some example mun resolutions key terms tech technology how to stand out virtually and in person and information about some of best delegates model un conferences that happen as well so I just wanted to take a second to show everyone this resource I definitely take some time to review it on your own and to share it with your students we also have another guide for parents that's going to be coming out shortly that you're welcome to utilize with them as well and we have guides for advanced students as well so this one's great for new students or students preparing for their first or next upcoming conference and we also have more advanced guides for students doing crisis or other elements as well so I just wanted to show everybody again if you go to the best delegate website and check out the student resources page you can find these as well as thousands more resources but the top 100 or so key resources are all linked here so if you're trying to help your students learn public speaking you can find resources if you're trying to learn that teach them research you can find specific resources so definitely check out that asset here and with that I'll stop sharing my screen a minute and answer some of the questions that I've seen coming into the chat if you have questions about how to prepare students for mun conferences please feel free to jot them in and I will do my best to answer all of them and if I miss any Tony please feel free to flag them to me as well I see a great question from Lauren on any tips on how to spot AI content for opening speeches or resolutions well I'll say this just like in school I think that it's inevitable that students are going to be utilizing uh chat GPT and different forms of AI in order to augment their learning I would see this as an opportunity as well as a challenge but one thing that you might want to do is have them use it to help them research and help them brainstorm but to fact check it because it shot GPT is not perfect but it can be a resource so you might ask it to share country policy on a topic and have them you know create an example of an opening speech but you don't want your students to use that verbatim you want them to use that to help augment their research and their learning in terms of spotting AI generated content or AI generated resolutions you can use some of the the existing resources that teachers use to fact check you know essays and other things turnitin.com and other grading resources but the biggest thing that I would say is give students time to brainstorm and work together and and learn in a collaborative environment with one another and um I would say don't be upset by them using it as a resource but you want it to be a resource rather than to be all end-all when I was young Wikipedia was the equivalent like we would all look on Wikipedia as our First Source that we'd look to but that should not be the bln dollar it should be used as a jumping off point or a spot to find citations or links to then learn more so definitely um encourage students to go beyond chat GPT and Beyond the first thing that they find to keep learning and keep growing I see another question can I see the checklist yeah that checklist is uh in that guide and we can also share that as a separate Resource as well okay I see a question from Marianne we're taking a novice group of students to a no preparation conference in two weeks what are the top steps that you would recommend and they won't have countries in advance oh interesting most conferences will give you your country assignments at least a few weeks in advance just so that you know generally but the key thing that I would say is have them understand the topic broadly go through the topic background guide and practice you know giving speeches and debating with one another and ideally creating that opening speech because even if it's a no preparation conference it probably means that they don't expect you to write position papers or a formal document outlining your country's policy they probably still want you to understand the topic broadly so I would say with your students help them give speeches and do practice public speaking exercises and definitely have them read that background guide before they attend the conference great question Marianne I see a question on Note passing so during conferences Lauren wants to know uh when is note passing allowed and when are laptops allowed this really varies based on the conference that you're attending at most conferences note passing can happen the whole time except for the actual voting procedure that's when they're most strict on that and in terms of laptop use it really varies conference by conference some conferences will have time that's laptops up and sometimes that's laptops down and some conferences may have a double delegation committee where there's two people from the same school representing the same country and then they may actually have no laptops in committee except during unmoderated caucuses which is the informal debate and in that case some students might be in the hall working on resolutions on their computer during different parts of the simulation so sorry Lauren there isn't a standard answer to that it really depends on your conference that you're attending and you can feel free to check out the conference rules and that will give you a good idea um best Delegate for example when you attend our virtual conferences you'll be on your laptop the whole time because you're participating in that format and you can utilize the chat all throughout the conference to chat with the committee as a whole or with specific delegates as well I see a question on crisis type committees and do you have any tips for crisis yes thousands of them but the short answer for a little bit about crisis is a crisis style committee instead of representing just an individual country you may have the opportunity to represent a specific person that has their own portfolio powers and their own ability to influence the simulation that's happening and crisis committees are often fast-paced ever-changing simulations and we do have a guide to crisis on our website that I can have Tony drop in the chat as well that I'd recommend checking out and the biggest tips that I have on crisis are understand the topic and understand your individual powers and I know this might sound foreign but also go in with the crisis Arc or a plan for how you want to influence the simulation that's happening if that sounds like a foreign language to because you're new to model un don't worry your first conference will not be a crisis style committee it will most likely be a general assembly style committee where there will be all people representing individual countries but if you have students that are preparing for a crisis committee definitely check out our crisis guide or attend our crisis Workshop we've got a crisis Workshop coming up on October 14th that will help teach all the fundamentals to excel in a crisis style committee okay I see another question um I see a question most students are using chat GPT are you recommending students do research through AI technology my answer is yes and I I would start with CIA World Factbook and I would start with you know the BBC country profiles but I I wouldn't be afraid of showing students how to use chat GPT but guy using it as a guide to do further resource rather than as their soul stop it should not be the only thing they look at but it's okay if they use it to augment their learning I think it's our reality that it's part of not just students School lives but part of people's professional lives as well to utilize this type of technology so it's good for students to learn how to use it its limitations when it's correct and when it's not correct and one exercise I like to do is have students use it to you know create a position or to to read a position paper that it might generate and fact check it based on their own knowledge that they've gained researching the topic okay I see another great question does best delegate provide simulation conferences yes absolutely I'll share a little bit more a few minutes from now when I go over all of our resources but we've got five virtual conferences happening throughout the year that have both training and advanced sessions and you'll be guided by our expert mentors step by step through the process and get feedback as a group and as individuals on on how you're doing as part of that simulation so I definitely recommend checking those out the first one is in November and that'll be a great opportunity for students to really practice as they're getting ready for local and national conferences as well great question okay I see that we've got some delegations here that want to learn how to make speeches um great great thing to do and to practice I would recommend you give your students some prompts to practice making speeches together so that their first time making a speech isn't necessarily the opening speech for a specific country but it might be fun topics and prompts that you give one another to learn as well okay I see a question uh from a teacher they have students that are going to be participating in a best delegate conference in January and March and they're asking is it possible to do a practice simulation with best delegate prior to that the answer is yes we do do private conferences and private workshops as well and uh if you send us an email at support busdelegate.com our awesome customer service manager Joyce uh we'll reach out to share more information about scheduling that and pricing for a session and typically we do a five hour practice session that you can do with just your Club if you want them to have practice as a group before attending a conference okay I see another question I'm taking a group to Boston mun which is a rather rigorous conference I think uh one school year of money experience would be best as a qualifier would you agree with that even though it might leave some people out great question uh Shauna I would say that it depends on your students I often like to allow first-year freshman students to participate in a conference but to show that they want to be doing that by participating in local conferences and practice conferences in advance so for example One Way students could choose to set themselves apart is by attending some virtual or local conferences on their own as well before that Boston mun conference happens so we've got a November end of December virtual conference and I've seen a number of teachers that have encouraged their students to attend a practice virtual best delegate conference as a prerequisite for attending another National travel conference with their students and I've heard some teachers that want to do that to screen out students that just want to go on the trip and to find out if they really want to do model you add so um Shauna I'd say there's no wrong answer you can determine if it's a conference that you're only allowing your experienced students to go to or if the criteria might be about them putting in the own effort to learn and prepare uh to attend and I think it really depends on the student I don't necessarily recommend some of the largest conferences as a first conference for students because it can sometimes be intimidating but I would be willing to take freshmen to learn if they've done a conference a little bit earlier in the year as well I see uh some people who are looking to get the recording of this absolutely we'll have that available for everyone and we'll definitely include the how to power search and some of those other AD notes I see that um there was a question about whether or not you have to use brackets when power searching the answer is no you can do it either way and it'll still spit out the answer that you need as long as you have the site colon and the website that you want to look at and then a space before your topic in your country you'll get a good answer from your power search okay I see a great question from Sophia she's starting a model un Club at her school and wants some advice on generating interest we did a full webinar on this one last year so feel free to check out our YouTube channel and check out that recording but a couple of short tips that I'd say um to generate advice to generate interest one thing you can do is have a social studies teachers invite or recommend students who might want to participate in that program you can also run a really fun first simulation and have it be an open call whether it's a debate on school uniforms or a debate on a topic that students at your school really care about and you may also want to have like mentors the students that recruit other students to join the club and to come with them to participate so Sophia the biggest things that I would say are make it fun try not to make it too intimidating for students to get started and attend their first simulation and feel free to utilize teachers as a resource to help you find the kids that are excited and passionate about global issues okay I see a a couple of other questions let me just scan real quick I see some questions about uh utilizing English in modern there are many conferences around the world that have English committees as well as Spanish Chinese Russian Arabic and other language committees so it's a great opportunity for students to practice their English to learn how to speak professionally and negotiate if you're participating in a model un conference and you're not a native English speaker and it's an English-speaking conference the biggest thing that I would recommend is practice practice those opening speeches practice how to say the key terms related to the conference and and just try to be as confident as you can to engage because the best way you learn is is just by trying and participating with others I see a question if you were able to join model un would you recommend doing it online or in person my real answer is both model un is a great way to learn and meet people and enhance your skills and you'll gain different things from doing it in both of those two formats online it's a great way to get started it's lower cost it's really accessible to people around the world and you can also get access to experts easily who are running workshops and trainings from best delegate who can help you and then in person it's great to also practice the in-person social dynamics and the fun of an in-person or a travel conference so my real answer is both if I was an advisor creating my schedule for this year I would include a mix of virtual training conferences and workshops in-person local conferences and novice conferences as well as potentially some national or some travel conferences for my team to participate in as well okay those were some great questions I think I got the more majority of the questions that were posted here I see one more at large conferences how many countries get to give an opening speech great question it really depends typically you'll see at least an hour and a half of opening speeches so depending upon the committee size the minimum you'd see them get through is like 10 to 15 and the maximum might be 40 or so so some conferences you might be participating in a general assembly committee and it's possible there could be as many as 193 member states represented and it's possible it could even be a double delegation so you might have close to 400 kids in a room I do not recommend that as a first conference for students but I do want you to be aware that it exists and going into those conferences the best advice that I would have is have your opening speech prepared but also be able to repurpose it for any moderated caucus topics that are being interviewed used as well so definitely something to to consider taking a look at okay I see a few more questions uh popping in a question about yeah so great recommendation for ESL students participating is to make sure they know the vocabulary and abbreviations related to the topic because just like I used some acronyms like Spears today it's definitely something that you want your students to be comfortable with and with that I want to share a few more resources so let me just open back up my presentation for everyone and then if there's other questions I'll get to those as well but in terms of resources uh we've got a lot of awesome mun conference resources we have a great team of students behind the scenes uh University and high school and middle school students that are helping to create resources for the community and we've got some new guides and resources we've definitely got our new how to prepare for virtual and in person conferences guide we have a conference selection guide for teachers to Think Through what type of a conference do I want to attend is it local or national what style how do they consider Awards and all of those types of elements we also have guides on how to learn to debate diplomatically on crisis on all sorts of different elements of model un so again those are on our student Resource page on our website on bestdelegate.com and I'd recommend scanning through there to see some of these different guides and checklists and one thing I love that we created last year that I know many of you haven't yet seen is our one-page cheat sheet to model un if I could tell you one recommendation before a conference it is print this for every one of your delegates it will have for you key terms that come up in a model un conference it includes the flow of a committee what happens in order it also includes how to make motions in a fill in the blank format that your students can easily make a motion even if it's their first time participating and making a motion is essentially contributing to the flow of debate and what's going to happen next in a simulation this also includes a spot for them to prepare their opening speech and reminds them how to do that with the hook Point action formula it gives them a spot to come up with ideas on moderated caucuses and ideas for Resolutions and it also includes some of those key terms and those key underlying words that you might use to start an operative or a preambulatory clause so definitely check out this one page cheat sheet it's a great resource for students and we also have a cheat sheet on how to chair and a cheat sheet for mun advisors as well and to cheat sheet on crisis that are all great assets for you to use with your team also like I mentioned earlier we have training videos a full video library Ryan and I went in a few years back Ryan is the co-founder of best delegate along with Kevin Felix Chan and uh we spent a few days recording a ton of awesome assets so we've got videos on what model un is to help your students and your teachers and your parents understand it we have videos on how to give those opening speeches how to improve your public speech speeches how to research and so much more so definitely check these out uh they're really helpful for your students and then also please feel free to join us we've got a lot of upcoming workshops free webinars and conferences that are a great way for your students to learn and the first opportunity that I recommend you join us for is on October 14th we have five different levels of workshops that are going to be happening that day and it's a great way to get your whole team qualified to participate in model un simulations so we'll be doing a mun 101 session for students that want to learn how to do model you add we'll also be doing a crisis 101 session for students that want to understand crisis arcs and strategy and portfolio powers and how to represent a person or a country in a fast-paced changing simulation who will also be doing a cheering mun 101 uh training and if you are running a conference or if you have student leaders I highly recommend they attend this so they can learn how to chair practice simulations for your school for your returning your more advanced students we also are going to be running a how to win Awards webinar or session as part of that Workshop series and the last one is we also have an mun advising session on how to prepare students for conferences so this was your super abbreviated 30 minute how to prepare for a conference free session but if you'd love to take it to the next level we do have a three hour session which is a paid session forty dollars per student and is a great way to help your students prepare if this October 14th date doesn't work for your school and you'd prefer to have us run a private session for your school we can do that as well and we charge a flat fee of 600 to run a private training for your whole club so depending upon the size of your club that may be super affordable on a per student basis so definitely check out that October 14th training those workshops should be really fun for students and teachers to learn on October 26th we have our next free webinar and I asked teachers what they wanted to learn and one of the resounding things I heard was how to write a resolution so our next session on 7 pm on October 26th is going to be a training on resolution writing and we'll go a bit more in depth on how to create those resolutions and then on November 4th we have the first virtual best delegate mun Conference of the year and we'll be running both training and advanced committees for middle school and high school students so definitely another great way for your students to learn and prepare for local and national conferences so I hope that your students can join us for any of these if you're an individual student who wants to continue to learn outside of your club and wants to learn on your own we are also running at teams and clubs and there's two more weeks to register for both of those school year programs our teams are for students that are new to model un and they meet weekly and help students to prepare for virtual conferences and our clubs are for experienced mun students that want to learn with other student leaders and enhance their skills and that happens weekly throughout the school or bi-weekly every other week excuse me throughout the school year to enhance Advanced students knowledge so there's lots of ways to participate with your club or within the individuals through best delegate and with the broader mun community and while we'd love to have you participate with us we also just love to have students doing mun in general and I highly recommend checking out our updated conference database on bestdelegate.com if you go to the conference database split up into three sections you can see our middle school or high school and our University conference database and I want to give a huge shout out to one of our student volunteers Anish who upgraded our conference database and created it for this year you'll be able to search based on your geography based on the dates that you're looking for conferences and based on if you're looking for virtual or in-person conferences to find conferences that could be a great match for your students and if you know of a conference that's not in our conference database let us know there's a form right on the page that you can submit your conferences as well so that we can make sure they're included and help you to recruit students to attend your mun conferences so check out the new conference database for this school year and then of course please don't hesitate to get in touch with us our team is here to help grow the model un community and we really believe in this activity and want to help you to excel you can reach us by email at support bestolia.com you can call us and you can also schedule a call with one of our model un mentors generally Tony and I are the ones that are most likely to chat with you on these calls or you can reach out to us on social media as well but the number one way is that support bestdelegate.com email and we'll get back to you as soon as possible to share more resources for you on there and with that I really appreciate everyone joining us this evening to learn more about how to prepare for model un conferences this year I hope all of you have a fantastic year doing model un and that I hope that I'm able to help support you and your learning and if you have any other questions please feel free to stick around I'll hang back a few minutes and answer some of those and I hope that you have a fantastic school year and a great time doing Model United Nations

hello everyone and welcome I see people joining us now popping in from all over the country and all over the world thank you so much for joining us this evening I am super excited to have everyone here my name is Laura Beth Goldsmith and I&#39;m the executive director of Partnerships at best style yet and tonight we are going to be doing a training webinar on how to prepare for your first or next model U.N conference depending upon your own background and experience and I&#39;m really excited to share these Resources with ever run to help everyone kick off a great Model United Nations year together and before we get started I&#39;d love to get a little bit of an idea of who we have here with us this evening so if you don&#39;t mind please drop into the chat if you&#39;re on the session live with us tonight your name where you&#39;re from if you&#39;re a student teacher or parent and what you&#39;re hoping to learn from this webinar I got a few messages from some of you earlier today sharing how you were starting a new model un club and really needed to to get a solid understanding of what to do and I got a couple of messages with specific questions about upcoming conferences in October so I&#39;m excited to help everyone get prepared and if you are willing to share and introduce yourself please feel free to do so hi welcome I see we have a middle school teacher here with us from Chicago another great teacher here with us from Texas starting a new model un program at their school great to hear Carrie welcome from Miami Florida I&#39;m also down in Florida I&#39;m in Sarasota Florida this evening um great some more students here looking to learn about public speaking skills and how to prepare for conferences that&#39;s awesome to see I also see some students from New York and from Florida and from around the world oh we&#39;ve got a teacher from Honduras hi welcome we&#39;ve worked with many schools in Honduras before great to have you here so it is awesome to see that we have students teachers administrators and I see a couple of parents here as well looking to learn really how to prepare for model un conferences and I see people have questions about public speaking some questions about preparation in general some questions about research so we&#39;ll definitely do our best to help you understand what model un is and how to prepare for conferences awesome I see some parents that have students doing model un for the first time either as middle school or high school students that&#39;s great to see and a couple more teachers joining us from all over the world fabulous well I am really excited to help all of you prepare and as we jump in I want to tell you just a little bit about myself I&#39;ve been doing model un for over 17 years now and I started as a student and in high school I got really into model un at one of my first conferences I got to hear the Secretary General at the time ban ki-moon speak and I was really inspired to see how countries can come together to solve Global issues and I was very excited in college to also continue doing Molly on I actually picked my University Emory University because when I visited the school I stayed stayed with someone from the model un team and I just felt so welcome that at home and like it was part of my community and where I really belonged so I was president and head delegate of the model un program at Emory University where I studied political science and community building and social change and then I got my Master&#39;s in management through Harvard University and I&#39;m really passionate about global issues and about teaching and helping people understand diversity and different perspectives about complex Global issues I personally love to travel and I&#39;ve been to more than 60 different countries in all seven continents and I love helping students broaden their own perspective about different countries so I&#39;m very excited to get to share with you about maluan but enough about me let me share a little bit about best delegate as well best delegate is the world&#39;s leading Organization for teaching Model United Nations and we&#39;ve been able to have a great impact on the model un community over the last 12 plus years and our resources have been viewed over 10 million times we&#39;ve got a lot of great free resources like these webinars and resources that we provide online to help grow and build the model un Community we&#39;ve also had people from over 100 different countries participate in our training programs and we deliver in-person workshops and conferences as well as virtual conferences workshops teams and clubs and our programs consistently have received a 4.8 out of 5 or better rating so we are really passionate about model un and very very excited to get to teach students about global issues and with that I want to tell you what to expect today we&#39;re going to do a brief overview of an awesome guide that we have that we just released the updated version of for 2023 today and it covers how to prepare for model un conferences whether you&#39;re attending an in-person or virtual conference it&#39;ll give you everything you need to get ready for that it includes a step-by-step checklist to help guide your student through preparing for a conference and once we go through that checklist I&#39;ll also take some time to answer your questions some of you submitted questions in advance and you&#39;re also welcome to drop questions into the chat throughout this event and we&#39;ll go through those at the end as well and then we&#39;ll share a lot of additional resources we have a ton of great assets to share with you some one-page cheat sheets and guides to model un uh longer assets for parents students and teachers and we have a fabulous member of our team here with us tonight Tony who will be managing the chat and dropping in many of those resources for you and if you&#39;re watching the recording after the fact we&#39;ll also have all of those links in the description of the event so for those of you that are new to model un I know we had a couple of parents with new students starting in October I just want to share what to expect in model un students really step into the shoes of world leaders and learn about issues facing different countries and how to solve them it will challenge their own perspective to think differently about problems that they may have a personal opinion on but to understand it from the perspective of different countries and and world leaders in model un they&#39;ll learn to navigate the world and they&#39;ll learn about public speaking and diplomacy and teamwork and problem solving and Leadership and advocacy and they&#39;ll also have a lot of fun doing it and find like-minded friends who care about global issues get to go through research debate negotiation public resolution writing and they&#39;ll get to take action on the issues at hand that they&#39;re discussing and so they&#39;ll also get to learn parliamentary procedure and they&#39;ll have the chance to learn how to give an opening speech as part of the speaker&#39;s list they&#39;ll have a chance to debate on different sub issues as part of a moderated caucus they&#39;ll also have the opportunity to build blocks and find allies during unmoderated caucuses to write resolutions with and will have the chance to present as part of a authors panel and answer people&#39;s questions on the draft resolutions they&#39;ve created you&#39;ll also see them take action and vote on the global issues that they&#39;re addressing as well so over the course of an mun simulation they&#39;re going to get to go through all five of these stages of a model un simulation and we&#39;ll get to learn parliamentary procedure as well and so in order to participate in a model un simulation I definitely recommend downloading our new guide and Tony&#39;s going to drop the link for everyone in the chat as well so that you can go ahead and take a look at this document as well and it is a step-by-step guide for how to do model when you will get a copy of this recording if you want to see it as well as the guide so that you can utilize that with your model un clubs and it&#39;ll cover what happens at in-person conferences as well as what happens at virtual conferences and it will have a step-by-step checklist to help your students prepare for a mun conference and the first two steps that I recommend to anybody getting started with model un are to learn the basics the first thing is to read the new guide for preparing for model un conferences and it includes a lot of great information about model un itself The Next Step I&#39;d recommend is to watch some of our training videos we&#39;ve got training videos that have hundreds of thousands of views on what model un is how to create opening speeches all of these key assets that you might want to be teaching your students how to do we&#39;ve got a video that you can play for them and then reinforce with activities that we recommend in this guide as well to help your students feel confident going into their first simulation and our team of best delegate really wants you to be able to have your students do model un without a ton of preparation for their first conference you might want to consider a novice or a local conference or a virtual training conference for students that are doing model un for the first time and then you&#39;ll have some conferences that they spend months preparing for like a National High School mun conference where they may spend 20 plus hours preparing for a conference but what I&#39;m going to go over with you is how students can prepare in two hours or less for their first conference or their next conference and feel confident and ready to participate so the first thing that they&#39;re going to want to do when they find out that they&#39;re going to a conference is get their country assignment and read the background guide depending upon the conference they may or may not get those two things at the exact same time they might get it about a month before a conference if you&#39;re signing up for a best delegate virtual conference you&#39;ll find out your country uh close to the conference so like a month or so in advance but you&#39;ll know your topic as soon as you sign up so if you&#39;re signing up for a conference in March you&#39;ll already know what topic you&#39;re going to be debating at that point in time once you get your topic and your background guide as well as your assigned country you want to start by reading it and really read it end to end the person that wrote it most likely is the person that&#39;s chairing the committee so they are an expert in that topic and they want you to understand it going into that conference the next thing that you&#39;re going to want to do is do some additional research on the committee topic there&#39;s a lot of great assets already in the background guide but you&#39;ll want to dig just a little bit deeper to learn even more about that Global issue then the next step step five is to spend some time researching your country so you&#39;ll be assigned a country to represent and you&#39;ll want to really understand that country&#39;s government their point of view their policy on the issue that you&#39;re addressing and you&#39;ll want to spend 20 minutes or so to really get a key understanding of that piece and then you want to take some time to brainstorm your solutions to the global issues that you&#39;re addressing and you want to go into a conference with ideas for how you can solve the global issues you don&#39;t want to go in with a full pre-written resolution that&#39;s not allowed at most U.S conferences but you do want ideas in mind of how you&#39;ll solve those global problems then step seven is to rank your opening speech you&#39;ll want to spend 20 minutes or so preparing that speech before you attend and ideally practicing it in front of the mirror or with different people in your Club to help you feel confident before the conference that you&#39;re attending and then the final step step eight is to review how to write resolutions so that you can feel confident contributing with other students at this conference that you&#39;re attending and I see a question in the chat looking for the links to some of these resources uh Tony if you could double check the link for the preparing for conferences guide and make sure we drop that updated link that would be great and we&#39;ll also I&#39;ll also show everyone where it is on our website after we go through this checklist as well so let&#39;s imagine you have a conference that you are attending uh coming up in October and you are going to be on the UN social cultural and humanitarian committee your topic is natural disasters so you find that out and you want to start getting prepared for a conference or you find out that your students are the ones who are going to be participating in a conference with that topic so again you&#39;ll want to start by taking a look at that background guide and finding out what the country is that you&#39;re representing the background guide will typically have four key sections or five depending upon the conference for you to take a look at you&#39;ll start by understanding the topic background it&#39;ll have an introduction and some history on the topic for students to understand then you&#39;ll want to look at past International action what is the global Community done to address this issue so far then you&#39;ll want to think about what are the sub issues the topics that are related to the bigger topic that you want to be solving next you&#39;ll want to consider what are some of the different questions that I need to understand in order to solve the problem so these are some of the key elements that you&#39;re going to take a look at in the background guide then you&#39;ll want to take some time to research your committee topic specifically you&#39;re going to want to understand the topic itself and the problem that you&#39;re addressing you&#39;ll want to understand what&#39;s causing this problem is it a man-made problem is it something that&#39;s always existed what what&#39;s making it worse and exacerbating it you want to consider the effects of the problem at hand and then you&#39;ll want to consider the impacts and so that&#39;s the different things that you want to think about in regards to the topic research and also feel free to check the citations that are in the background guide because these citations have a direct links that will help you find out even more about the issue that you&#39;re you&#39;re understanding the next step step five is to research your country profile and Country policy there&#39;s a lot of great assets about out there to utilize one of them that I&#39;d recommend checking out is the best delegate research map it&#39;s basically a Google map and you can click on the country that you are representing and it&#39;ll include a link to the CIA World Factbook it&#39;ll share information on where the country is located it&#39;ll give you the BBC country profile it&#39;ll tell you when they joined the UN and other key information and you can use that as a jumping off point some of the key things you&#39;ll want to know about your country include the government the allies of your country it&#39;s geography and its economy some of some of the key information that would be helpful to understand you can also take some time to research your country policy so that you know what you&#39;re representing so you might be discussing the issue of natural disasters and depending upon what country you&#39;re representing you may have a different opinion on the topic for example if you&#39;re representing a small island nation you may feel really strongly about you know reparations or funds to help rebuild the countries that are are sinking and underwater from natural disasters so in order to understand your country policy you&#39;re going to want to look for what&#39;s called Spears speeches programs events agreements and reports and we have an awesome two minute video online that covers how to find Spears so I&#39;d recommend checking that out in our video library and we&#39;ll link to that in a few minutes but when you go to research I recommend doing something called Power searching and if you don&#39;t know this trick to navigate Google I definitely write this one down to power search you want to start by instead of just typing your topic and your country and searching the internet you want to start by making sure you&#39;re searching a specific website or credible source so for example I might choose to type into Google sitecolonun.org and then my country so let&#39;s say for argument&#39;s sake New Zealand and then I might put in something like the topic natural disasters and if I do that it gives me the chance to really really understand and find credible searches and you can see when you do that for this topic for example you&#39;re going to find things from the UN sustainable development you&#39;re going to find other things from the UN website that are just going to be far more useful and credible and I definitely recommend teaching it to your students Beyond model un as well hi Heather I see your comment in the chat I definitely recommend using it for students social studies and in research as well because it just helps them to navigate through a lot of the bias and a lot of the missing information on the internet as well so feel free to power search to find this information to understand your country policy and to read articles that are particularly relevant this is especially helpful for high school students or older middle school students some of the younger middle school students may start more with that background guide and may even depending upon the conference get some profile they might be given a profile on their country to help them get started as well so once you&#39;ve done your initial research on your country policy you&#39;re going to want to start to brainstorm some solutions to the global idea and topic that you&#39;re addressing and specifically you&#39;ll want to start by thinking about key elements you&#39;ll look at the list of issues that you&#39;ve identified and you&#39;ll use the spears those again those speeches and programs and events and agreements and reports to find solutions that you support you don&#39;t have to invent them all they can be existing programs that you want to build upon and enhance you&#39;ll also want to analyze how effective pre-existing Solutions are if they&#39;re things that you want to build upon or if you actually want to come up with new ideas to solve Global issues so as a student in model un you don&#39;t need to always come up with something entirely new or Innovative you can look at what&#39;s already happening and improve upon ideas or programs that exist so you want to take some time to brainstorm your Solutions and come in with a number of ideas on how to address the topic that you&#39;re looking at so you&#39;ll want to start by looking at the bigger issue so in this example natural disasters and that might lead you to try to understand different sub issues such as climate change or risk preparation and management and then you might start to brainstorm some additional pieces such as ideas that you have to address the problem and in this case one idea a student may have is sustainable storm barriers how do we create lobbies or barriers to prevent hurricanes and other natural disasters from having the full impact that they often do on communities so you&#39;ll take some time to brainstorm your Solutions which can ultimately help you to create your resolutions but before you get to resolutions once you have some Solutions in mind you&#39;ll want your students to prepare their opening speech for a conference you always want to go in with the speech pre-written so that you feel confident to First engage with the committee and something that you&#39;ve already created most conferences you&#39;ll have the opportunity to give a one-minute speech it could be as short as 45 seconds or as long as two minutes but typically you&#39;ll see about a one minute speaking time for an opening speech and in that opening speech there&#39;s three key things that you&#39;re going to want your student to include to have a well-structured speech and that is a hook a point and an action and if you&#39;ve attended any of our best delegate events you&#39;ve probably heard this many times before but you want to start by hooking everyone in and grabbing their attention a good hook might include a quote a statistic a question or a very short story that piques everyone&#39;s interest and brings them in so if you&#39;re talking about natural disasters you may have a statistic about how many people have lost their homes because of natural disasters or you may have a quote about somebody that lived through a horrific hurricane or a natural disaster that impacted them so say something quick that gets everyone&#39;s attention and relates to the key point that you&#39;re trying to make and in a mun opening speech your point is to share your country&#39;s policy briefly and concisely you should have a clear one sentence main point and you can include two to three supporting points but a lot of students try to speed read and fit way way too much into an opening speech and it&#39;s much better to say one thing really well that everyone will remember came from your delegate than to try to say many many things poorly so I would make make the time to have that key thing a really stand out effectively as your main message the next thing I&#39;d recommend is your action and this is what you want people to do after they hear your speech so you&#39;ll want to tell them either a physical action to do like meeting you during the next unmoderated caucus or passing a note or a way to support the policy that you&#39;re recommending so you want to be specific and get people excited and with that you can give a great opening speech and I would definitely recommend having students prepare that and if you have a regular club meeting having them deliver those speeches for other students and get feedback and critique it so that they feel really comfortable and confident going into their conference so again the three key parts of that opening speech that you want them to prepare are their hook their point and their action and as they&#39;re preparing that speech they should Target about one minute in length and ideally you don&#39;t want them to have to like read directly off of a paper looking down but instead feel confident to be able to deliver that maybe glancing down at a few bullet points or notes but just really having a general idea of what they&#39;re going to say in advance with that hook point and key action so that is their opening speech another key thing that students often feel like they don&#39;t know how to do going into their first mun conference is how to write a resolution so this is definitely something that I recommend reviewing with your students and essentially there&#39;s three key parts to a resolution you have your header you have your preambulatory Clauses and you have your operative Clauses so your header is that top part of a document it includes the committee name it includes the topic it includes the sponsors so those are the key people that are writing it sometimes you&#39;ll often have you may have signatories as well depending upon the conference that just means people that want to see the document introduced and debated doesn&#39;t mean they&#39;re ultimately going to vote for it but that may be something that you also see in a header so the header is just that top section of the document not controversial at all I recommend putting the sponsors in alphabetical order so there&#39;s not even any fighting over who goes first either and that is that top element the next part of your resolution is your preambulatory Clauses and these describe the issues that your resolution will tackle or past International actions and it may reference specific existing resolutions on this topic and if in order to format these you&#39;ll essentially want to start each of these with an italicized first word and end each of them with a comma interestingly a UN resolution is actually one giant sentence so each of these has a comma at the end of it and it&#39;s not till the very end of your operative Clauses that you&#39;ll actually have a period so pay attention to that formatting a little bit and when we give you some of the resources you&#39;ll also see some Solutions on there as well so operative Clauses these contain your ideas and your group&#39;s ideas to solving the topic that your committee is addressing in terms of formatting the first word is underlined each of them ends in a semicolon except for the very very last operative clause which ends in a period and they&#39;re numbered so an example might be recommends that member states create adaptive natural disaster preparedness plans a bad one but in reality you&#39;ll probably want it to be even more detailed as you work together with other students so that&#39;s an example of an operative clause and uh you you&#39;ve got this you can learn to write resolutions I&#39;ll share that was the very very brief overview of the three sections of a resolution but we actually have in our uh on our website in our video library we&#39;ve got some full video resources on how to write resolutions as well as all the key terms that you need to create resolutions and with that I want to leave a good amount of time uh to go through some of your questions so again we&#39;ve got this checklist you&#39;ll want to go through the eight steps with your students to help them feel prepared going into a conference and you&#39;ll want them to really be ready to go through those five stages of a model un simulation and you&#39;ll also want to cover a little bit of the Parliamentary procedure with them and ideally do a practice simulation but even if you don&#39;t get the chance to do a practice simulation if they&#39;re attending a training conference or a novice or local conference for their first conference this will give them the chance to get more confident and build up repetitions while working with chairs that are comfortable student leaders or you know facilitators that want to help them understand how to do model un because at the end of the day you want their first conference experience to be a really positive one where they feel confident participating and learning with one another and now I want to spend some time on your questions and one of the questions that I found in the chat and I just want to make sure everyone is able to find is that resource guide and all the other resources that are available from best delegate so if you go on the bestdelegate.com website there is an awesome page of student model un resources and it&#39;s split up by different areas one of those areas is how to prepare for guides and one of those guides is our new how to prepare for virtual and in-person model un simulations and we also have our easy to use checklists so we&#39;ve got checklists our one page cheat sheet to model un we have checklists on how to run mun simulations checklist on how to chair resources for what to do in model un every year you&#39;re participating and a lot more so definitely check out this page it has a lot of great assets including the 2023 edition of the how to prepare for conferences guide and here&#39;s a look at it if you haven&#39;t checked it out yet it&#39;s pretty comprehensive it&#39;s a 24-page guide that should make it as easy as possible for you to prepare your delegates it&#39;ll cover what model un is it includes key terms and what happens at conferences it includes that checklist and how to prepare include some example mun resolutions key terms tech technology how to stand out virtually and in person and information about some of best delegates model un conferences that happen as well so I just wanted to take a second to show everyone this resource I definitely take some time to review it on your own and to share it with your students we also have another guide for parents that&#39;s going to be coming out shortly that you&#39;re welcome to utilize with them as well and we have guides for advanced students as well so this one&#39;s great for new students or students preparing for their first or next upcoming conference and we also have more advanced guides for students doing crisis or other elements as well so I just wanted to show everybody again if you go to the best delegate website and check out the student resources page you can find these as well as thousands more resources but the top 100 or so key resources are all linked here so if you&#39;re trying to help your students learn public speaking you can find resources if you&#39;re trying to learn that teach them research you can find specific resources so definitely check out that asset here and with that I&#39;ll stop sharing my screen a minute and answer some of the questions that I&#39;ve seen coming into the chat if you have questions about how to prepare students for mun conferences please feel free to jot them in and I will do my best to answer all of them and if I miss any Tony please feel free to flag them to me as well I see a great question from Lauren on any tips on how to spot AI content for opening speeches or resolutions well I&#39;ll say this just like in school I think that it&#39;s inevitable that students are going to be utilizing uh chat GPT and different forms of AI in order to augment their learning I would see this as an opportunity as well as a challenge but one thing that you might want to do is have them use it to help them research and help them brainstorm but to fact check it because it shot GPT is not perfect but it can be a resource so you might ask it to share country policy on a topic and have them you know create an example of an opening speech but you don&#39;t want your students to use that verbatim you want them to use that to help augment their research and their learning in terms of spotting AI generated content or AI generated resolutions you can use some of the the existing resources that teachers use to fact check you know essays and other things turnitin.com and other grading resources but the biggest thing that I would say is give students time to brainstorm and work together and and learn in a collaborative environment with one another and um I would say don&#39;t be upset by them using it as a resource but you want it to be a resource rather than to be all end-all when I was young Wikipedia was the equivalent like we would all look on Wikipedia as our First Source that we&#39;d look to but that should not be the bln dollar it should be used as a jumping off point or a spot to find citations or links to then learn more so definitely um encourage students to go beyond chat GPT and Beyond the first thing that they find to keep learning and keep growing I see another question can I see the checklist yeah that checklist is uh in that guide and we can also share that as a separate Resource as well okay I see a question from Marianne we&#39;re taking a novice group of students to a no preparation conference in two weeks what are the top steps that you would recommend and they won&#39;t have countries in advance oh interesting most conferences will give you your country assignments at least a few weeks in advance just so that you know generally but the key thing that I would say is have them understand the topic broadly go through the topic background guide and practice you know giving speeches and debating with one another and ideally creating that opening speech because even if it&#39;s a no preparation conference it probably means that they don&#39;t expect you to write position papers or a formal document outlining your country&#39;s policy they probably still want you to understand the topic broadly so I would say with your students help them give speeches and do practice public speaking exercises and definitely have them read that background guide before they attend the conference great question Marianne I see a question on Note passing so during conferences Lauren wants to know uh when is note passing allowed and when are laptops allowed this really varies based on the conference that you&#39;re attending at most conferences note passing can happen the whole time except for the actual voting procedure that&#39;s when they&#39;re most strict on that and in terms of laptop use it really varies conference by conference some conferences will have time that&#39;s laptops up and sometimes that&#39;s laptops down and some conferences may have a double delegation committee where there&#39;s two people from the same school representing the same country and then they may actually have no laptops in committee except during unmoderated caucuses which is the informal debate and in that case some students might be in the hall working on resolutions on their computer during different parts of the simulation so sorry Lauren there isn&#39;t a standard answer to that it really depends on your conference that you&#39;re attending and you can feel free to check out the conference rules and that will give you a good idea um best Delegate for example when you attend our virtual conferences you&#39;ll be on your laptop the whole time because you&#39;re participating in that format and you can utilize the chat all throughout the conference to chat with the committee as a whole or with specific delegates as well I see a question on crisis type committees and do you have any tips for crisis yes thousands of them but the short answer for a little bit about crisis is a crisis style committee instead of representing just an individual country you may have the opportunity to represent a specific person that has their own portfolio powers and their own ability to influence the simulation that&#39;s happening and crisis committees are often fast-paced ever-changing simulations and we do have a guide to crisis on our website that I can have Tony drop in the chat as well that I&#39;d recommend checking out and the biggest tips that I have on crisis are understand the topic and understand your individual powers and I know this might sound foreign but also go in with the crisis Arc or a plan for how you want to influence the simulation that&#39;s happening if that sounds like a foreign language to because you&#39;re new to model un don&#39;t worry your first conference will not be a crisis style committee it will most likely be a general assembly style committee where there will be all people representing individual countries but if you have students that are preparing for a crisis committee definitely check out our crisis guide or attend our crisis Workshop we&#39;ve got a crisis Workshop coming up on October 14th that will help teach all the fundamentals to excel in a crisis style committee okay I see another question um I see a question most students are using chat GPT are you recommending students do research through AI technology my answer is yes and I I would start with CIA World Factbook and I would start with you know the BBC country profiles but I I wouldn&#39;t be afraid of showing students how to use chat GPT but guy using it as a guide to do further resource rather than as their soul stop it should not be the only thing they look at but it&#39;s okay if they use it to augment their learning I think it&#39;s our reality that it&#39;s part of not just students School lives but part of people&#39;s professional lives as well to utilize this type of technology so it&#39;s good for students to learn how to use it its limitations when it&#39;s correct and when it&#39;s not correct and one exercise I like to do is have students use it to you know create a position or to to read a position paper that it might generate and fact check it based on their own knowledge that they&#39;ve gained researching the topic okay I see another great question does best delegate provide simulation conferences yes absolutely I&#39;ll share a little bit more a few minutes from now when I go over all of our resources but we&#39;ve got five virtual conferences happening throughout the year that have both training and advanced sessions and you&#39;ll be guided by our expert mentors step by step through the process and get feedback as a group and as individuals on on how you&#39;re doing as part of that simulation so I definitely recommend checking those out the first one is in November and that&#39;ll be a great opportunity for students to really practice as they&#39;re getting ready for local and national conferences as well great question okay I see that we&#39;ve got some delegations here that want to learn how to make speeches um great great thing to do and to practice I would recommend you give your students some prompts to practice making speeches together so that their first time making a speech isn&#39;t necessarily the opening speech for a specific country but it might be fun topics and prompts that you give one another to learn as well okay I see a question uh from a teacher they have students that are going to be participating in a best delegate conference in January and March and they&#39;re asking is it possible to do a practice simulation with best delegate prior to that the answer is yes we do do private conferences and private workshops as well and uh if you send us an email at support busdelegate.com our awesome customer service manager Joyce uh we&#39;ll reach out to share more information about scheduling that and pricing for a session and typically we do a five hour practice session that you can do with just your Club if you want them to have practice as a group before attending a conference okay I see another question I&#39;m taking a group to Boston mun which is a rather rigorous conference I think uh one school year of money experience would be best as a qualifier would you agree with that even though it might leave some people out great question uh Shauna I would say that it depends on your students I often like to allow first-year freshman students to participate in a conference but to show that they want to be doing that by participating in local conferences and practice conferences in advance so for example One Way students could choose to set themselves apart is by attending some virtual or local conferences on their own as well before that Boston mun conference happens so we&#39;ve got a November end of December virtual conference and I&#39;ve seen a number of teachers that have encouraged their students to attend a practice virtual best delegate conference as a prerequisite for attending another National travel conference with their students and I&#39;ve heard some teachers that want to do that to screen out students that just want to go on the trip and to find out if they really want to do model you add so um Shauna I&#39;d say there&#39;s no wrong answer you can determine if it&#39;s a conference that you&#39;re only allowing your experienced students to go to or if the criteria might be about them putting in the own effort to learn and prepare uh to attend and I think it really depends on the student I don&#39;t necessarily recommend some of the largest conferences as a first conference for students because it can sometimes be intimidating but I would be willing to take freshmen to learn if they&#39;ve done a conference a little bit earlier in the year as well I see uh some people who are looking to get the recording of this absolutely we&#39;ll have that available for everyone and we&#39;ll definitely include the how to power search and some of those other AD notes I see that um there was a question about whether or not you have to use brackets when power searching the answer is no you can do it either way and it&#39;ll still spit out the answer that you need as long as you have the site colon and the website that you want to look at and then a space before your topic in your country you&#39;ll get a good answer from your power search okay I see a great question from Sophia she&#39;s starting a model un Club at her school and wants some advice on generating interest we did a full webinar on this one last year so feel free to check out our YouTube channel and check out that recording but a couple of short tips that I&#39;d say um to generate advice to generate interest one thing you can do is have a social studies teachers invite or recommend students who might want to participate in that program you can also run a really fun first simulation and have it be an open call whether it&#39;s a debate on school uniforms or a debate on a topic that students at your school really care about and you may also want to have like mentors the students that recruit other students to join the club and to come with them to participate so Sophia the biggest things that I would say are make it fun try not to make it too intimidating for students to get started and attend their first simulation and feel free to utilize teachers as a resource to help you find the kids that are excited and passionate about global issues okay I see a a couple of other questions let me just scan real quick I see some questions about uh utilizing English in modern there are many conferences around the world that have English committees as well as Spanish Chinese Russian Arabic and other language committees so it&#39;s a great opportunity for students to practice their English to learn how to speak professionally and negotiate if you&#39;re participating in a model un conference and you&#39;re not a native English speaker and it&#39;s an English-speaking conference the biggest thing that I would recommend is practice practice those opening speeches practice how to say the key terms related to the conference and and just try to be as confident as you can to engage because the best way you learn is is just by trying and participating with others I see a question if you were able to join model un would you recommend doing it online or in person my real answer is both model un is a great way to learn and meet people and enhance your skills and you&#39;ll gain different things from doing it in both of those two formats online it&#39;s a great way to get started it&#39;s lower cost it&#39;s really accessible to people around the world and you can also get access to experts easily who are running workshops and trainings from best delegate who can help you and then in person it&#39;s great to also practice the in-person social dynamics and the fun of an in-person or a travel conference so my real answer is both if I was an advisor creating my schedule for this year I would include a mix of virtual training conferences and workshops in-person local conferences and novice conferences as well as potentially some national or some travel conferences for my team to participate in as well okay those were some great questions I think I got the more majority of the questions that were posted here I see one more at large conferences how many countries get to give an opening speech great question it really depends typically you&#39;ll see at least an hour and a half of opening speeches so depending upon the committee size the minimum you&#39;d see them get through is like 10 to 15 and the maximum might be 40 or so so some conferences you might be participating in a general assembly committee and it&#39;s possible there could be as many as 193 member states represented and it&#39;s possible it could even be a double delegation so you might have close to 400 kids in a room I do not recommend that as a first conference for students but I do want you to be aware that it exists and going into those conferences the best advice that I would have is have your opening speech prepared but also be able to repurpose it for any moderated caucus topics that are being interviewed used as well so definitely something to to consider taking a look at okay I see a few more questions uh popping in a question about yeah so great recommendation for ESL students participating is to make sure they know the vocabulary and abbreviations related to the topic because just like I used some acronyms like Spears today it&#39;s definitely something that you want your students to be comfortable with and with that I want to share a few more resources so let me just open back up my presentation for everyone and then if there&#39;s other questions I&#39;ll get to those as well but in terms of resources uh we&#39;ve got a lot of awesome mun conference resources we have a great team of students behind the scenes uh University and high school and middle school students that are helping to create resources for the community and we&#39;ve got some new guides and resources we&#39;ve definitely got our new how to prepare for virtual and in person conferences guide we have a conference selection guide for teachers to Think Through what type of a conference do I want to attend is it local or national what style how do they consider Awards and all of those types of elements we also have guides on how to learn to debate diplomatically on crisis on all sorts of different elements of model un so again those are on our student Resource page on our website on bestdelegate.com and I&#39;d recommend scanning through there to see some of these different guides and checklists and one thing I love that we created last year that I know many of you haven&#39;t yet seen is our one-page cheat sheet to model un if I could tell you one recommendation before a conference it is print this for every one of your delegates it will have for you key terms that come up in a model un conference it includes the flow of a committee what happens in order it also includes how to make motions in a fill in the blank format that your students can easily make a motion even if it&#39;s their first time participating and making a motion is essentially contributing to the flow of debate and what&#39;s going to happen next in a simulation this also includes a spot for them to prepare their opening speech and reminds them how to do that with the hook Point action formula it gives them a spot to come up with ideas on moderated caucuses and ideas for Resolutions and it also includes some of those key terms and those key underlying words that you might use to start an operative or a preambulatory clause so definitely check out this one page cheat sheet it&#39;s a great resource for students and we also have a cheat sheet on how to chair and a cheat sheet for mun advisors as well and to cheat sheet on crisis that are all great assets for you to use with your team also like I mentioned earlier we have training videos a full video library Ryan and I went in a few years back Ryan is the co-founder of best delegate along with Kevin Felix Chan and uh we spent a few days recording a ton of awesome assets so we&#39;ve got videos on what model un is to help your students and your teachers and your parents understand it we have videos on how to give those opening speeches how to improve your public speech speeches how to research and so much more so definitely check these out uh they&#39;re really helpful for your students and then also please feel free to join us we&#39;ve got a lot of upcoming workshops free webinars and conferences that are a great way for your students to learn and the first opportunity that I recommend you join us for is on October 14th we have five different levels of workshops that are going to be happening that day and it&#39;s a great way to get your whole team qualified to participate in model un simulations so we&#39;ll be doing a mun 101 session for students that want to learn how to do model you add we&#39;ll also be doing a crisis 101 session for students that want to understand crisis arcs and strategy and portfolio powers and how to represent a person or a country in a fast-paced changing simulation who will also be doing a cheering mun 101 uh training and if you are running a conference or if you have student leaders I highly recommend they attend this so they can learn how to chair practice simulations for your school for your returning your more advanced students we also are going to be running a how to win Awards webinar or session as part of that Workshop series and the last one is we also have an mun advising session on how to prepare students for conferences so this was your super abbreviated 30 minute how to prepare for a conference free session but if you&#39;d love to take it to the next level we do have a three hour session which is a paid session forty dollars per student and is a great way to help your students prepare if this October 14th date doesn&#39;t work for your school and you&#39;d prefer to have us run a private session for your school we can do that as well and we charge a flat fee of 600 to run a private training for your whole club so depending upon the size of your club that may be super affordable on a per student basis so definitely check out that October 14th training those workshops should be really fun for students and teachers to learn on October 26th we have our next free webinar and I asked teachers what they wanted to learn and one of the resounding things I heard was how to write a resolution so our next session on 7 pm on October 26th is going to be a training on resolution writing and we&#39;ll go a bit more in depth on how to create those resolutions and then on November 4th we have the first virtual best delegate mun Conference of the year and we&#39;ll be running both training and advanced committees for middle school and high school students so definitely another great way for your students to learn and prepare for local and national conferences so I hope that your students can join us for any of these if you&#39;re an individual student who wants to continue to learn outside of your club and wants to learn on your own we are also running at teams and clubs and there&#39;s two more weeks to register for both of those school year programs our teams are for students that are new to model un and they meet weekly and help students to prepare for virtual conferences and our clubs are for experienced mun students that want to learn with other student leaders and enhance their skills and that happens weekly throughout the school or bi-weekly every other week excuse me throughout the school year to enhance Advanced students knowledge so there&#39;s lots of ways to participate with your club or within the individuals through best delegate and with the broader mun community and while we&#39;d love to have you participate with us we also just love to have students doing mun in general and I highly recommend checking out our updated conference database on bestdelegate.com if you go to the conference database split up into three sections you can see our middle school or high school and our University conference database and I want to give a huge shout out to one of our student volunteers Anish who upgraded our conference database and created it for this year you&#39;ll be able to search based on your geography based on the dates that you&#39;re looking for conferences and based on if you&#39;re looking for virtual or in-person conferences to find conferences that could be a great match for your students and if you know of a conference that&#39;s not in our conference database let us know there&#39;s a form right on the page that you can submit your conferences as well so that we can make sure they&#39;re included and help you to recruit students to attend your mun conferences so check out the new conference database for this school year and then of course please don&#39;t hesitate to get in touch with us our team is here to help grow the model un community and we really believe in this activity and want to help you to excel you can reach us by email at support bestolia.com you can call us and you can also schedule a call with one of our model un mentors generally Tony and I are the ones that are most likely to chat with you on these calls or you can reach out to us on social media as well but the number one way is that support bestdelegate.com email and we&#39;ll get back to you as soon as possible to share more resources for you on there and with that I really appreciate everyone joining us this evening to learn more about how to prepare for model un conferences this year I hope all of you have a fantastic year doing model un and that I hope that I&#39;m able to help support you and your learning and if you have any other questions please feel free to stick around I&#39;ll hang back a few minutes and answer some of those and I hope that you have a fantastic school year and a great time doing Model United Nations

Transcript for:Model United Nations Training Webinar Notes

Transcript for:
Model United Nations Training Webinar Notes