Learning Community Charter School

We’re thrilled to announce that a Middle School is launching a Model United Nations club.

We had a brief meeting Thursday Nov. 13 with about 20 interested students. The program, which has chapters in schools worldwide, allows students to pick to represent a particular country, and research that country and its political, social and economic views. Students then debate important issues from that country’s perspective.

For more information about Model UN, check out their website: Model UN

The amazing thing about Model UN is that it provides students with a chance to hone their research and persuasive speech skills in a new and exciting way, and we are excited to be one of the few Middle Schools with the club.  

Our goal is to hold a Model UN conference here in the Spring, inviting other schools and their Model UN clubs to LCCS. We are also considering attending a Model UN conference in February at the College of William and Mary in Virginia.

The meetings for the Model UN club at LCCS will be held both in school and after school, and we are working out details of exactly what date and time those meetings will be held.

We are looking for more students to join, so if you believe your 6, 7 or 8^th grader is interested, reach out to Ms. Conod for more information at [email protected]. 

     Monday we were excited to have two representatives from The Advancement Project visit the school. You can read more about the organization and their fascinating work here.

     The idea to bring them to LCCS came from 5th grade teacher Shanelle Muse, who heard about the group during a professional development conference at the NJ Education Association Urban Education Symposium. One of our goals in bringing in the group was to examine the discipline policies at LCCS and ensure that they are not only consistent with the school's CIRCLE values, but also genuinely effective in curbing misbehavior. 

"The School to Prison Pipeline is a national trend where children, particularly of color, or those who have learning disabilities, or a history of poverty or abuse, are funneled out of the school system and into juvenile and criminal justice systems. LCCS partnered with The Advancement Project to combat those statistics and gain awareness." 
- Shanelle Muse, 5th grade teacher 

     This approach to discipline is not about "taking it easy" on students who are acting out, or minimizing bullying misbehavior. In fact this approach is consistent with our strong no-bullying stance as it addresses many of the underlying problems that lead to bullying and works to eradicate those issues. 

     We are already doing many of the things advocated by the Advancement Project to avoid what is known as an "exclusionary disciplinary policy," where infractions _ sometimes minor _ lead to suspensions. As Dwana Nicole, the group's policy advocate said, "There are a lot of beautiful things going on here." 

     What does it mean to avoid an exclusionary discipline policy? At times, students who have defaced property at the school have spent time cleaning up school grounds, instead of being suspended. This is important because it encourages students to take responsibility for their actions through both dialogue and actions, it teaches personal responsibility and consequences, and it keeps a child in school, learning. 

     We are also looking to make suspension at LCCS an extremely rare event. We hope to replace this by becoming more familiar with restorative justice, where aggrieved individuals within a school speak about the issues involved in terms of how our CIRCLE values were violated, and what can be done to effectively address the issue and repair either the relationship or the item that was broken.      
     
      We are planning on discussing our restorative justice work with LCCS parents in the coming months. It is our hope that, through this work, suspensions and detentions at recess and after school will become rare, replaced by students undertaking meaningful actions to address whatever has happened within the school community.