MIddle Schoolers Model Citizenship through Model Congress
On Saturday, April 25, nine sixth graders participated in the 20th Packer Collegiate Middle School Model Congress. This year’s participants included Andrew, Ben, Georgia, Lola, Marcelo, Martine, Michelle, Odelia, and Simmon. The group has worked with faculty facilitator Sharyn Hahn since the end of October to write bills, prepare speeches, read students’ bills from the other schools that participate, and learn about and practice parliamentary procedure. The team spent the entire day at Packer Collegiate High School this past Saturday for the annual culminating event.
Nearly 200 middle school students from 13 area independent schools, including LREI, sent delegations of model legislators to the event. When students arrived at the event, they broke off into one of 17 separate committees based upon the content of their bill. These committees were meant to resemble actual congressional committees and included among others Judiciary, Education, Health, Housing & Urban Affairs, and Science Space & Technology. After a morning committee session filled with heated debate and criticism, the bills that passed committee were reviewed in one of four full sessions. (House I, House II, Senate I and Senate II).
The bills introduced by the LREI delegation included the following:
- Delegates: Benjamin and Marcelo
Title: An act to require that one out of every building on each block in U.S. cities that is rainwater accessible has a rainwater collection plant on its roof.
Preamble: This act would ensure that many buildings in New York City could reuse water that would normally go down to sewage and be unused. With these collection plants, buildings would have chlorinated and filtered water for bathing and washing. - Delegates: Lola, Michelle and Odelia
Title: An act to increase the amount of Farmers Markets/Greenware across the country.
Preamble: The purpose of this act is to increase the production of local farmers’ produce by creating more places where they can sell their harvests and where customers can get to know the agriculturists who grow their food. - Delegates: Georgia and Martine
Title: An act to stop the littering of gum and cigarette butts in public places and on the streets in Us cities.
Preamble: The purpose of this act is to enforce the prohibition of the littering of gum and cigarette butts in public places and on the streets. We will do this by putting more ashtrays up around in U.S. cities and large reminders to spit out gum into a trashcan and not onto the street or stick it to park benches. In addition, signs referring to the fines that will be imposed on offenders will be highly visible. Cities will be a much cleaner and safer place for people to live. - Delegates: Andrew and Simmon
Title: An act to build designated smoking areas other than outside of buildings on the streets in towns and cities in the United States.
Preamble: The purpose of this act is to stop smokers from smoking in highly populated outdoor areas, such as public train stations, outdoor bus stops, and children’s playgrounds. This will prevent non-smokers from inhaling second hand smoke.
The students’ hard work throughout the year resulted in a day of excitement and accomplishment. All nine of our delegates participated in all of the sessions and several debated in the plenary committees. At the end of the morning committee sessions, the students voted on the one bill that passed in their session that was the most controversial and informative, in order to bring it to the plenary session. These bills were then debated within one of the larger group in the afternoon. The bills introduced by Georgia and Martine and Marcelo and Ben were debated in these plenary sessions. Marcelo and Ben’s bill was passed during this session, which was a first for LREI.
The afternoon concluded with an Awards Ceremony in which all of the delegates were recognized for their the hard work and performance. In addition, special awards were given out to the best prepared and most “professional” delegates. Both Marcelo and Ben were awarded Honorable Mentions. All of the delegates had a good time and they are all looking forward to next year with their eyes on the coveted Golden Gavel award (of which we have won two over the past four years). We are very proud of all of the delegates for their commitment to the Model Congress program.