A peep behind the IASIMUN curtain: The Headmistress’s office

Can a high school be a promoter of novelty? If so, what makes it be one? The ingredient used by the “Emil Racoviţă” National College is a nationwide project supported by the new headmistress, Mrs. Paula Gavrilescu, who tells the students not to stop believing that even they can contribute to making the world a better place.

How about getting a better view on the project, straight from the source? Mrs. Gavrilescu agreed to answer to our questions and provide some information from the inside. She explained how everything started. It was last spring when some students took part in a similar conference at Sankt Petersburg. They were led by Mr. David Pi, a Peace Corps volunteer teaching at “Emil Racoviţă”. “Mr. Pi knew how to gain their attention and how to determine them to get involved in such wide scope projects, by offering “samples” of the American system of education”.

However, if you considered such an event to be the work of a small group of people, you should think twice. “The aim of this conference is to get everyone involved, both students and teachers, in order to develop analytical and decisional skills, to create the capacity to shorten the way between words and deeds.” The headmistress also referred to school as an institution and stated that “encouraging students and teachers to get involved and to make a change should be school’s main purpose. As I see it, not only the students must evolve, but the teachers, too.”

In her opinion there couldn’t have been a better city than Iasi to host the MUN Conference: “Iaşi is just the proper city for this event to take place in, due to its vast cultural heritage”, declared the headmistress proudly.

Undoubtedly, Iasi is the most indicated city but why specifically “Emil Racoviţă”? What does it provide to students? “Besides creating the website for the conference, supporting the advertising campaign, and participants’ selection, certain training courses will take place in the high school. Here, the students will practice lobby, they will have committee debates, and, in the third day, they will vote the proposed resolutions”.

So, could there be a profile of the ideal MUN delegate? Mrs. Gavrilescu provided a “sketch” of such a candidate: “He should wish to better himself up, with improving existent skills and developing new ones. He should have the capacity to look objectively at world’s problems and not be influenced by his feelings when it comes to making a decision.”
The headmistress concluded that “This conference should also be an exercise of tolerance, because, no matter their visions of the world, students must understand that they belong to the same civil society. Moreover, it is a way of finding solutions to problems, starting from the same subject, creating resolutions in different directions. The bigger the chances to find the best solution, the more solutions there will be. Having a different opinion does not mean conflict, but efficient co-operation”.