CAS Project (UN Day 2019, Preparation)

Colombo Model United Nations is a debate focused group within OSC that debates using the UN model of an assembly of representatives of many countries, tackling important global issues from the perspectives of their different countries. However besides just debate, another thing we do within OSC is host the schools UN day festivities. UN day is a day in which OSC celebrates  the UN and internationalism through a parade with all the schools different nations represented, videos and performances by students usually though not always focusing on different UN interest issues, a number of families prepare buffets of foods from the various home countries, students and staff coming in national dress and most importantly a COMUN run student seminars focusing on the UN social development goals. The social development goals are 17 UN goals focused on improving general conditions for humanity the world over, empowering the disenfranchised and promoting sustainable development, these goals were set at 2015 and are set for completion by 2030. Each year the COMUN group chooses one of these goals, and does a seminar on a specific aspect of the goal to the secondary body. This year we decided to choose the goal of Gender Equality.

My role this UN day is partly to assist with the general organization of the event, and act as an mc for the closing ceremony however my most significant responsibility is to lead the COMUN group in charge of making presentations to the 8-10 grades. The COMUN group divides the secondary body into grades 6-7, 8-10 and 11-12, we make this decision to adjust the complexity and focus of the topic. While still focusing on the topic of gender equality, grades 8-10 will be given a topic somewhat more complex and serious than grades 6-7 and somewhat less so than grades 11-12. For grades 8-10 we decided to focus on the topic of wage inequality, its roots, the problems it creates, and most significantly the potential solutions for it. It is important to mention that even within the 8-10 group, we still break up each grade into 2-3 separate classes to allow for more interactive and engaging lessons.

My groups task was to design and execute an hour fifteen minute lesson plan capable of informing students on the topic, holding their attention, and ideally interesting them in later independent research into the topic. To do this across four weeks we made an interactive presentation to show all the different classes, incorporating games, debates and creative tasks. Within our plan we focused on as much as possible encouraging students to come up with their own answers, in pursuit of this some of our activities included the class by asking each student for why they believe there is gender pay gap (or why there isn’t which also may have been discussed based on responses), presenting solutions to the pay gap to students and asking them to find the pros and cons of each solution and having them debate over different possible solutions.

By taking part in this activity I was able to develop my skills as teacher and presenter and so overall as a communicator, learning to present to kids much younger than me was especially valuable to me as I had to put a lot more focus on entertaining them than I would when presenting to adults or my peer group. Seeing my weaknesses in being especially engaging to younger kids… I relied on support from my group, many of who were much better at it. This developed my appreciation of the value of working collaboratively.

My greatest goal with this CAS activity was not to demonstrate that there was a gender wage gap, it is an issue of significant global significance and so there are already plenty of other sources for that which the students are certain to eventually run across if they have not already. While informing students on this important and controversial issue was a part of my goal, my main aim was to teach student to engage with  this issues critically, to not accept arguments made from either side at face value but to analyze problems and find their own solutions.