Idaho has added a club to high schools around the state for the 2021-2022 school year. 

Lakeland High School’s Model UN group went to boise May 19-22. 

Shanda Heacock, a teacher at LHS is the Model UN club leader. This being Heacock’s first year, seemed like a good fit for Model UN’s first year as well. 

Model UN is a great club for students to join to learn to think quickly and work as a group. 

“Model UN is a club where we are simulating a general assembly meeting at the United Nations. Students learn how to think on their feet, and learn specifics about the united nations: how it runs and what it does. The countries worked together to solve their problems without war,” Heacock mentioned. 

The students at LHS did a great job at the Boise event. 

The event went fabulous. Four out of the five students won an award for something like best delegate. It was the first time for all of these students and they all kicked butt,” Heacock said. 

The students in the Model UN club felt very accomplished by how they did in competition as well. Sasha Hall was very proud of how they did. 

“I think the event went pretty good actually. Especially for the first time, you know everyone is new to it, so I think it went really really well,” said Hall. 

Despite how well the event went, it did come with its own challenges. 

“It definitely was a challenge going against other schools. We had to think very quickly to respond to the other schools and what they had to say. It was definitely a fun experience and I can’t wait till next year and see how much our club develops and grows,” Hall said.  

The Model UN club experienced other problems outside of the competition as well. 

“Boise Stae was closed so we had to do a lot of walking. There was no food and we had to walk a lot to find places to eat. We had to walk about a total of 20 miles all weekend. It was definitely exhausting to walk that much over a span of three and a half days, but the experience was still fun,” Heacock mentioned. 

Heacock was very impressed with the effort that her students put in while they were at the competition. 

“The students were in meetings the whole during the day, so they had probably a couple hours of meetings. We preresearched the country we were assigned which was Serbia. Serbia was a challenge because it is not as important as ither countries in the United Nations,”

Heacock said. “It was pretty difficult to research since there was not much information on it, but the students did great. They talked about climate change all day long.”

Heacock is grateful for the opportunity that Model UN was brought to Idaho and is thrilled for the coming years to see how much LHS Model UN can improve. 

“I am super excited for next year because now we know what to expect for future years. I’m hoping to get more students and I’m going to fight for a more significant country,” Heacock said.