While eighth grade student Ellie Friedrich was nervous as she presented the bill she had been preparing for over a month, she felt ready for the moment she had been waiting for. After waiting for her peers to finish their arguments, she explained her bill on the Underserved Business Development Act (UBDA) that ensures that women-owned small businesses in rural areas have access to grants to advance their businesses further. After careful deliberation from her classmates, her bill was passed.
On March 10 and 11, eighth grade students participated in model congress, the two-day-long simulation of how bills get passed in the U.S. House of Representatives. Students presented their bills in an attempt to model how they would go about making a decision in real time. The participants debated and ultimately got to decide whether or not their peers’ bill should be passed or not.
“We literally are trying to do everything we can to model what happens in Congress,” eighth grade government teacher Heidi Zansler said. “We go through debate and deliberation, then we actually vote on it, roll call, where everybody has [to] say yay or nay on the bill, and then it either passes or doesn’t [and we] move on to the next.”
During the two days of model congress, students sit in the theater or exhibition hall to present their bills. Students are assigned in groups of two or three to a bill, then they spend a few weeks writing their arguments and speeches before they ultimately have to persuade people to vote for theirs to get passed.
“I would say make sure your topic is something that you really want to learn more about and you’re passionate about so you can make good arguments,” eighth grade student Ryder Chesman said.
In the last few years, the social studies department has made changes to the assignment. Students now have the option to choose from issues related to that particular committee, and write an issue paper based on that. Unlike in previous years when the students would have to do their formal paper as a presidential decision paper before model congress.
Zansler said they made this change as previously it caused a lot of unnecessary research to have to be done in a short period of time. Zansler believes this new format of teaching allows for students to keep their mind focused on the legislative branch.
“What that does is set them up for success when it comes to model congress,” Zansler said. “Because it’s less research that they actually have to do, because they did a lot of the research when they wrote their paper.”
Students are graded for their issue, bill analysis and committee, bill evaluation, a summative assessment and lastly points for participation.
This event allows for all eighth graders to collaborate, research specific bills and simulate a real life situation.
