Seeing all the sides to a story is important in everything one does, which is exactly what Model UN teaches students.

Model UN is a club in which students research to prepare for conferences where they take on conflicts of the world and have to argue their sides as delegates to opposing countries.

“It’s so important that students are consistently looking for ways to grow and think differently,” Ms. Megan Puckett, sponsor, said. “Because even if you disagree with something, I think it’s always really helpful to understand the other side.”

Freshman Joleigh Underwood explained that she is on a crisis council which is where some participants play a role as a leader of a country instead of a delegate.

“So we did the Mongol invasion and I was the Sultan of Egypt. It’s kind of like a ‘make your own story,’” Underwood said. ”So one time for 30 solid minutes, I was the leader of the entire Middle East, and then I got assassinated.”

Besides crisis councils, standard Model UN allows students, like freshman Jacob Grosch to work together and come to a resolution about a major world issue.

“People think that you’re just arguing about topics about the world, but you’re actually getting opinions from different people and cultures,” Grosch said. “so you’re able to understand more of the world’s problems in a perspective that you wouldn’t expect.”

The point of the club is to encourage world cooperation and get kids thinking about problem solving as part of a bigger picture.

“I took away that a lot of people care about the earth and its happenings,” Underwood said. “it was cool meeting other people that care just as much as me. Out there, there are people that really want to make a difference in the world.”

Learning about the conflicts of the world and how to come to resolutions is important; however, it’s clear the message behind this club goes far beyond that.

“It’s important to be empathetic to the positions of others,” Ms. Puckett said. “ I feel like that’s something that is a little bit more on the personal side of what I think it teaches kids, probably inadvertently.