Originally published in TEACH Magazine, 75 Years of the United Nations Special Issue, 2020
By Jessica Selzer
In the first five years under communist rule in South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, nearly 1.3 million people decided to abandon their homes and flee their native countries. An outflow of refugees on a scale the world had not witnessed since World War II, an exodus of Biblical proportions. What will the world do about it?
The Model UN Club found me in 2013 in the shape of two very keen Grade 9 girls making a pitch to me at lunch about the need for more women in politics. I didn’t quite understand what I was agreeing to, but they had me at “women in politics.” I have been the staff sponsor ever since, and have loved to watch this club grow into the largest club in the school. It has been called “sports for smart kids,” and is experiential collaborative learning at its finest.
Jessica Selzer has been a social studies teacher at Rockridge Secondary School in West Vancouver, BC, since 2010, and staff sponsor of the Model UN club since 2013.
