Middle schoolers solve world problems

After a warm-up activity, students in Stacy Albrecht's sixth grade social studies class started suggesting ways to solve three world problems at their CubMUN meeting. The topics at hand were implementing residency building standards, offering free food for school-age children and making education more affordable for families.

CubMUN is a weeklong event where the members of the Moscow High School Model UN club visit Moscow Middle School to walk students through their own version of a Model UN. Model UN is an organization which gives students the chance to simulate a United Nations meeting.

With a class of 10 students, getting the conversation started took some help but by the end of the class period, students were raising their hands to be part of the conversation. All students represented South American countries in their simulation.

The students spent Day 3 in small groups working on food insecurity, housing and education access — all of which play a role in poverty which was the big problem the students were looking to solve. Day 4 brings students back to small groups to combine their ideas into one document — called a resolution.

Nicole Xiao, senior and head delegate at the MHS Model UN, said they hoped the sixth-graders would see that they can be part of a solution and that this event would help widen their worldview.

“I hope they come away realizing that even if there’s all these huge pressing problems in the world, they can definitely be part of the solution to help solve them,” Xiao said.

The CubMUN also got a redesign this year, she said, because they wanted to update the information and organize everything they had done since the program started in 2016. The high schoolers have put the event on every year until 2021, when they took a year off due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Albrecht and Harper Wallen, another sixth grade social studies teacher, said the program gets the kids involved in problem solving. Albrecht said this year she saw her students getting more comfortable and start coming out of their shell. One student, she said, had been quiet for a majority of the year and then in her CubMUN small group she was able to get comfortable enough to be part of the discussion.

“I’m seeing a lot more of my kids ... actually opening up and sharing their thoughts and ideas with their groups,” Albrecht said, “whereas they may not be so willing to do that in the classroom situation.”

Editor's note: The last name spelling of Stacy Albrecht has been corrected. It was misspelled in the version that appeared in print because of  a Daily News error.

Kali Nelson can be reached at knelson@dnews.com.