MUN stands for Modeled United Nations. Students from High Tech High are given the task to, well, as its titled, model the united nation. There are about 6-8 committees each year. Two students that have invested some time to learn all about MUN get to be chairs. The chairs are the facilitators of the committee they choose. Then there are 20-30 students that play the roles of countries or characters depending in what committee they're in. Some examples of committees are Overpopulation, Philosophical World Utopia, and Witch Trials. So if you were in Overpopulation you would have to try to solve overpopulation by consulting with other countries and create resolutions. The students have to do intensive research of the countries or characters they are and write a position paper and a speech on there views and solution for the problem at hand. The purpose of MUN is for the students to get more involved in the worlds problems, to see what is actually happening in the real world.
There are many skills that students take away from MUN. Some that I have are research skills. I don’t believe that I have the strongest research skill but MUN definitely helps me improve them. We have to become the country or character that we are so we have to do as much research as possible to fully understand all of their views and thoughts. Another skill is speaking in front of a large group of people. I remember the very first time I did MUN and I was completely frightened. My first time was in 6th grade, back then I wasn’t very good at speaking in large groups of people, especially with people that were grades above me. Different from this year in MUN where I had no problem speaking in front of my committee. I was way more comfortable and I also new more of what I was talking about making it a much better experience.