On March 14, 2021, members of the Fieldston Middle School Model United Nations team took time out of their weekend to attend a Model UN conference. Despite being the youngest team present, the team won a delegation award \u2014 beating prestigious high school teams.
For those unfamiliar with the activity, Model UN is a simulation of the global organization United Nations, typically held in the form of a convention. Each participant is assigned to represent a different nation and attempts to tackle ongoing global issues from the perspective and policies of their country. I had the chance to briefly converse with two members of the winning team, Dahlia Zemmel and Alkis Karmpoliotis. Zemmel represented Belgium and Karmpoliotis had the fortune of being selected for Greece, where much of his family is from. \u201cIt was really nice to represent a country that I know about, and that I have a history with.\u201d
Both agreed that overall, hard work, thorough research, and preparation were key to their success at the conference. \u201cWe try to take every conference very seriously,\u201d said Zemmel. In fact, the team did not compete in several conferences prior to this one, in order to ensure they were fully ready, and their efforts clearly paid off. Usually, the team does not face high schoolers, and the environment was certainly different than usual — \u201ca little harsher, a little scarier,\u201d perhaps \u201cnot as friendly.\u201d However, Zemmel reiterates the importance of diligence, explaining, \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter if we\u2019re competing against high schoolers, middle schoolers \u2014 it\u2019s not really about who you\u2019re competing against, it\u2019s about how hard you are working.\u201d
The group does have a few more conferences coming up this spring, spread across the city, however, they will likely only face teams of their own age. The team will also continue throughout high school. For now, they\u2019re still basking in the success, feeling \u201cvery happy with how the team performed.\u201d Zemmel explains, \u201cIt\u2019s a delegation award, which means that the school won together. So I\u2019m very proud of everyone who went.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On March 14, 2021, members of the Fieldston Middle School Model United Nations team took time out of their weekend to attend a Model UN conference. Despite being the youngest team present, the team won a delegation award \u2014 beating prestigious high school teams. For those unfamiliar with the activity, Model UN is a simulation of the global organization United Nations, typically held in the form of a convention. Each participant is assigned to represent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":282,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[402,58],"tags":[],"coauthors":[404],"class_list":["post-5468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fieldstonian-middle-school-paper","category-slider"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/282"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5468"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5471,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5468\/revisions\/5471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5468"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}