A group of Peasley Middle School seventh and eighth graders is practicing four days a week to polish their roles as ambassadors to the Change the World Model United Nations that will convene March 29 at the U.N. Headquarters in New York.

The students are in a class led by Sabrina Bellino, a civics teacher who once taught at Gloucester High School. She had used the U.N. model with the older teens, and has found that it also works at the middle school level.

“I just got them started and they took over,” she said as the students began to arrive and quickly set to work to re-arrange the room. Smaller table and chair set-ups quickly become one long conference table, the students retrieve their respective country placards, and the meeting is convened by chairman Joey Bollinger.

As each participating country is called out, the student representing that country responds, “present and voting.” Once the roll call is done, the students tackle the topic of ...