San Juan Hills students are preparing and competing in Model United Nations conferences and the Academic Decathlon this school year.

The Model united Nations (MUN) is a class taught by Mr. Baker, where students act as delegates of the United Nations (UN) and simulate UN committees.  Aside from MUN, the SJHHS Academic Decathlon team ( an academic competition) has also started preparing this year, with a total of nine members on this years team.

MUN  focuses on competing in conferences, which students debate on world issues.  The class  had their first conference this past weekend at Santa Margarita Catholic High school.  With different delegates coming from all over the Orange County, the SOCOMUN (name of the conference) had many debates focusing on topics such as cyber terrorism, diseases, and crisis’ in different countries.

“First each delegate gives a speech on his or her topic, so you know each country’s position, then from there you form resolutions to help solve the issue.” said Madi Bauman (11).  Over forty SJHHS delegates had speeches prepared and laptops by their side ready to compete early in the morning.

Five weeks of preparation was the just the right amount of time for the students to prepare in class.  “We get a lot of free time to research our topic and find information for our speeches that we present in upcoming conferences.” said Alexis Bennett (11). Before the conference, Julia Buscemi (11), said, “after researching I write a position paper, stating my position on the topic, and I use that to write my own speech.”

After the conference, the students felt confident that their speeches had went well and many were anxious to see their scores on his or hers overall performance.  To end the conference SMCHS held an award ceremony for the best delegates.

Following the MUN conference, the SJHHS Academic Decathlon team, ran by Mrs. Serio, has gathered,  Seniors, Justin Perez, India Mcfadden, Gabby Urdaneta-Carrera, and Kimberley Schafer, as well as, Juniors, Jenna Bowman, Macey Bergstrom, Josh Estrada, Newara Faltas, and Austin Cavaliere have all joined this year’s team.

“The academic Decathlon is a series of ten academic events, in which students compete, ranging from math, economics, social science, science, literature, art, and music.” said Mrs. Serio.  After the ten events are over, there is an interview and essay competition that takes place.

The quiz bowl wraps up the decathlon, and Mrs. Serio says, “The quiz bowl is like a ‘Mean Girls’ mathlete competition, a direct competition between teams in trivia, which is related to this year’s category or this year’s theme, which is India.”

The Academic Decathlon is at the end of January, beginning of February.  It takes place at the Department of Education in Orange County, and lasts two days.

San Juan hills Decathlon team has the chance to win scholarships, medals, and accolades all by competing against students from different high schools in Orange County.