Nolan Polson
EDUC 331
Gene Pelowski
11/27/2024
Model Legislature Journal
Wednesday October 30th
At my field experience I spent my lunch break with Harrison Working on the bills for WAPS. We were able to get all the bills done by the time our next class started.
During Model Legislature class I found that none of Harrison’s bills ported over correctly. For whatever reason the exact same method I used to put the bills onto the website did not work for him. My guess would be that this was an issue with the mac book that he has. I should ask around if anyone else with a mac book was having a similar issue (I forgot to ask). Harrison and I came up with a plan where I would do the bill information for all the bills if he and Mary handled the pathing for the bills.
We grinded out each of the remaining Introduction lessons to commit the rest of our class to model legislation. This is going to be a rough couple weeks getting ready for the big event.
Thursday October 31st
During Public Service class I was bored and went onto the Model Legislature Website to fix the rest of the bills. I ended up doing the bill paths, descriptions, and information on all bills for WAPS. I probably should have made it a group effort. Mary did not look at any of the bills because I never gave her the chance to. If she is not confident in using the website it might lead to issues.
Wednesday November 6th
Representative Pelowski met with each school individually and asked each of us what we needed to be working on. Before we spoke with Representative Pelowski we looked over and cleaned up our bills. We told Representative Pelowski that all our bills looked good and that we only had 15 bills. We were informed that there might be more being added to the website, and we needed to email the coordinator of WAPS. We emailed the coordinator for our school during the class. The coordinator emailed us that night to let us know that he was adding several more on Friday. We also had to try and balance the amount of people in each committee from our school. We had one student running for president pro tem. and 2-3 people in each committee.
Class got out surprisingly early and I was able to get dinner for once.
Saturday November 9th
I went on to the website to check if the coordinator for WAPS added any more bills. There were five more bills I handled. I completely forgot to do ask my group members to help or if they needed me to show them how to handle the bills being entered. I also forgot to do the accompanying senate or house file in the titles for these bills making them a bit harder to find. I fixed this on the 20th when I noticed the issue.
While I was on the website fixing my bills, I noticed about 6 remaining bills from Rushford- Peterson school. I decided to just do the bills that came in as they came in. In this I realized that I could be doing more to support the Model Legislature, so it runs more efficiently. I know I am not the best at public speaking so getting in front of a big crowd is not where I can help but I can do what I can to support on the website.
Tuesday November 12th
During my weekly meeting with the Social Media team, I asked if we wanted to do any coverage of the Model Legislature event. I was able to set us up with a photographer who would take some pictures of the opening ceremony and interview some of the people involved in the event. We also spoke of doing a funny video before the event to raise awareness for the college students, but we later decided this should be presented in a more professional manner and scrapped the idea.
Wednesday November 13th
Over the course of the week, I checked the website and did about 5 more bills from Rushford-Peterson so the couple of people did not need to do all of them. I believe there were four people handling the bills for RP while there were three of us doing the bills for WAPS. The 19 bills for WAPS did not need three people when the 100+ of RP only had 4.
We broke up into the groups of our committees where we each worked on the pathing for our bills. Abby and I made a detailed agenda for our committee. We also focused on balancing the people in our committees so that they were not all dominated by Rushford Peterson students. I appreciate their commitment, but we need to have more people from a variety of schools. Having over two thirds of the event from one school is a problem.
Wednesday November 20th
I continued checking each day for more bills that went on to the website. There were a handful more that were put in by Rushford Peterson throughout the week. At the start of class Garrett asked if it was me who had been helping out with bills and thanked me for helping.
Abby and I spent the class wrapping up making an Agenda. We had more bills moved to our committee by others, so we decided to restart. We decided to only make an agenda of the bills whose first stop was in Judiciary committee. We realized we cannot plan out the order or anything to do with the bills that would be coming to us, so we would have to be quick on our feet with new bills.
After we finished our bills, we got to work organizing the nametags. Representative Pelowski said the bills should already be in alphabetical order, but they were just thrown in one big bag. I started by putting the pins in the nametags while Abby organized them in the box. Eventually Anna, Rianne, and Brennan joined us as well. We spent most of our time organizing the name tags.
I saw Rianne highlighting her bill book motions in different colors depending on who says the phrase so she could show it to the chair so they could find what they need to do easier. I thought that was a smart idea and decided to do the same as well. Pink was anything that was said by the chair.
Thursday November 21st
The big day started with all of us meeting in the Ballroom. We spread out the nametags on to a large table and got ready for the kids to arrive. I found out from Representative Pelowski that they removed the room numbers from the bill book, but the rooms were on the website. I wrote down each of the room numbers from the website on the bottom of my page so I would be able to direct anyone who did not know where they were going or so I could tell my room’s page where they needed to go.
Nobody told the kids where to go after the morning event. I walked to the venue, and I sat by the door so I decided to lead the group of kids over to Helble Hall. During the walk I asked the students if they knew what rooms they needed to go to and all of them said no. I understand that we wanted to cut back on the bill book, but there is important information that was cut out. The old bill book being 50 pages was too much clutter, but the 15 page pamphlet was not enough information. There should have been the room numbers of each committee and possibly a map of where Helble Hall is compared to the Kryzsko. This bill book is efficient but should have had more to it.
When we reached Kryzsko I stood at the bottom of the stairs with my list of the rooms open and directed the students to the rooms they needed to go to. This should have been posted somewhere or should have been in the bill book. Skylar joined me in directing the students to their room after a bit. Once all of the students knew where they were going I took my leave to the Judicial committee.
I got there before Abby and spent the time getting to know the students in my committee and helping them relax. Everyone seemed nervous. We had a Chair picked out for the event ahead of time, but there was no vice chair picked out so we asked for a volunteer. We got started by doing one of the bills of someone in our committee and realized that we forgot to grab the gavels. I went searching for them, but eventually Garrett came by carrying our gavels and another committees as well.
As we got moving, Abby and I began fitting into our roles. Abby received the majorite of the messages from the page because she was sitting closer to the door and she wrote the minutes. I handled the opening of the votes, printing of the headers, and the signing of the headers. I sent most of the messages with the page and if either of us needed to get help I would go for it. I still do not know how to write the minutes for a meeting. Not learning much about the process of writing the minutes is probably my biggest regret throughout this process.
One of the bills we did ended with a tied vote that was decided by a person who was out of committee. I thought a lack of a vote was treated as a nay vote, but I was later corrected by Gene Pelowski when another committee asked about it.
There were quite a few bills that were not being processed correctly. Bills that had gone through the Health and Human Services committee of the Environment and Agriculture committee were not sent to the right committees and were not being closed as having passed in their committees. As the event went on, I began getting frustrated with them as I saw any bills come from them.
Adam Gelle came and told us we did not have enough bills to hold a floor session so we were going to continue with committee meetings when we got back from lunch. Gelle also asked if we had any critiques with the website. I told Gelle I would like to have a search bar on our committee pages and the ability to sort in the bills on the committee pages. Both of these are things we could do on the bill page and they were I was able to find bills during the setting up.
After lunch we continued with committees, and everything went well. The students picked up the process really fast. These kids are smart.
The students from Rushford Peterson had to leave around 2:30. This cut us back by half an hour because without them we did not have quorum.
We met after the meeting and had quite a few things to fix. I went up on the screen to have Gelle walk us through how to check if a bill had the proper pathing. Only a couple of the bills in my committee had any issues and all of them were ones that just reached our committee. I also did some of the fixes on the bills for WAPS. I believe I was one of if not the best people in our class at working on the website. I spent so much time playing around with it and experimenting with how things work.
I had a couple ideas for how to fix the website to make it work more efficiently. One idea I had to do with how the current position of a bill was highlighted. If a bill failed it stays within the committee that caused it to fail. I had the idea that it should remain highlighted the same color as if it was in committee.
Mary was struggling. Apparently, it was her and Harrison in Health and Human Services committee and neither of them did any of the bills for our school. I showed her how to fix a bill and how to manipulate some of the features of the bill. She was able to pick it up pretty quickly, but we should have done more of the bills as a group. I did not think about how others need to learn how to do the system. I thought I was being nice by doing more work for others. I now know to stay in my lane so everyone gets a chance to help out.
Friday November 22nd
I really like Adam Gelle. All of the ideas I thought would make the website more user-friendly were added overnight. I think the search bar in the committee with the list of all of the bills that are all in committee made the process right quite a bit faster.
We got started with committee right away and there was nothing more of note. We needed to grind out enough bills to be able to do the House and Senate Meetings. We told this to our committee, and they started asking less questions. The students were still into it, but they did not seem as involved. I think it would have been a much better experience and probably more realistic activity if we were able to stretch it out to a full 5 days. If you students had their bills fail during this model legislature there was no way we would have the time to go back and revive the bill. The fact that all the students felt the time constraint was a detriment to the experience.
I learned that one of the students in my committee was 21 and here from a college during a bill about giving teenagers 16 and older the right to decide to have gender affirming surgeries. The 21 year student argued that 16 year olds are not mature enough to make that decision for themselves and that they are too stupid to know what is right for themselves. This was incredibly harmful to the discussion, and he seemed to scare some of the younger committee members when he raised his voice slightly during this conversation. I decided that I needed to also weigh in to the conversation in opposition to him, so the other committee members did not feel threatened about disagreeing with him. I understand that I am in a position of power above this student, but he is closer in age to me than he is to the students in the committee. I am barely 22 putting on an event where there is a 21-year-old debating with 15-year-olds. This is not fair to the students who we put this event on fair. It is not fair that he has the right to vote while the people he is discussing with do not.
One of the students in my committee sent over 5 messages to the Rules committee to ask if they could look at her bill. When she sent the first note I told her that they are probably swamped and will get to her bill as soon as they can. After that fifth note in one hour, I cut her off and told her that sending so many notes is probably making them want to not do her bill.
At 11:30 we saw people in the hall heading downstairs so we assumed it was time to begin the floor meetings. We had the students help clean up the room. I kept all the papers just in case we needed them. I directed the Senators towards their building and went downstairs.
After sitting there for a bit, I noticed there were some of the people missing from the floor still, so I went to go check on the other committee rooms. The Rules committee was still working hard at passing as many bills through as they could, but the General committee was still in session. I told them to wrap their bill and go downstairs. I helped the General committee clean up their room because the two college students were the two clerks for the Senate.
I did not do much during the floor meetings. The student directly next to me did not bring a charger for his computer so I had mine open and he read from my screen and could open his computer just to vote. The student on my other side had their chat open and was talking to another student about me. The students were talking about how good-looking I am. Having students talk about my looks like that is nothing new to me, however, it still makes me uncomfortable. I do not know how to shut it down or to deal with this behavior.
The time in the House floor flew by incredibly fast. We got through about 8 bills and only 3 passed both committees to be signed by the governor.
Analysis
At first, I hated the model legislature preparation. I did not see this as useful to me as a teacher. I did not see it as a use of my time as my last teaching course. We only have two social studies education courses and one of them is spent putting on one large activity for students. I thought this was a waste of my time as a teacher, but as we got through the class on Wednesday the 20th and got to work on those final preparations it finally clicked.
Model Legislature was bigger than just me. It was bigger than the EDUC 331 class. It was bigger than Gene Pelowski. Model Legislature was a group learning opportunity for over 200 people of varying ages to learn more through each other. This was the largest scale learning opportunity I have ever been a part of and will most likely ever be part of. I learned so much about how the state government works, how to work through problems with my students, how confidence is important as a leader, and the importance of simulations. I learned the importance of getting multiple groups of students involved in one large activity. There are so many things that I learned that will be useful to me as a teacher, it is difficult to list them all out here. I did not see all the things I was learning as I was problem solving until the very end. This activity showed me how to exist when I am out of my element. I do not always have to be in complete control while I am teaching, however, I must always maintain professionalism.
The students learned how to present themselves and their bills. I wholeheartedly believe this event could have been extended to 5 days and the students would have seen firsthand the personal marketing and the importance of self-presentation present in state politics. The students all seemed so excited and energetic about the experience. I wish I was able to participate in something like this when I was in high school. I saw some students talking about potentially wanting to work in government. I believe there is no stronger method of showing the students how the processes of government work than to do an activity like this. The students who worked as the chairs learned a valuable lesson in authority and the importance of making decisions. There were times when the chair would ask me what to do and I would tell her that it is her choice as the chair to decide. By the time we came back from lunch on the first day I could see a shift in her behavior as she took on the mantle of the person who was in charge. Letting our students feel empowered is an invaluable resource.
I hope the website becomes useable for teachers to plan their own small-scale version of model legislature. I would like to be able to set up a similar activity in the high school that I work at in the future where different classes and different grades can come together to debate bills and learn the processes of government. I could see the model legislature activity expanding to include political science majors or any other college students who are interested in politics. I implore you to push Adam Gelle to make the website downloadable or as a program where teachers can set this up for their own students at their own schools. I truly appreciate the opportunity to be a part of such a large-scale activity and hope that it continues long past my time.