High School Leadership Conference 2009

Dear HSLC Mentor,

Thank you for participating in the High School Leadership Conference! This folder is for your reports. This is a public forum and we encourage your professors and teachers to review your journal entries for feedback. Make sure your report is appropriate for public viewing.

Your report need to be at least 500 words (single-spaced, 12 pt font, 1” margin). It is your responsibility to save a copy of your report. Additionally, it should focus on the content of the conference and include key concepts of International Relations, as well as specific student responses.

In order to submit your report correctly, you have to hit "Post Reply" and NOT "New Topic." Selecting the latter will post your report in a folder that is not yours.

When logged in, an edit button appears at the top of each of your own posts. You can always go back to your report and change anything you wish before the entry's deadline. Be sure that your report is saved to your own personal computer as back-up.

Your HSLC Report will be due by 9:00am on April 24, 2009. After the deadline, your folder will be locked and no late reports will be accepted.

Again thank you for your participation in the Conference!
- CALIS Staff

APPROVED - Craig - 4/27/09
Thank you for participating in the conference and being flexible with the room confusion!

Aisling Winston
HSLC 2009
Economic Liberal – Red

For this year’s conference, I served as a mentor representing the economic liberal viewpoint. I had the opportunity to work with four girls from Sherman Oaks high school. All four girls had prepared somewhat for the conference by reading the assigned articles and by researching somewhat into the economic liberal viewpoint. They were not, however, completely comfortable applying the viewpoint to the issues that we were dealing with. We spent the first breakout period discussing how economic liberals viewed various issues, and through this discussion the students were able to formulate a clearer picture of the goals of economic liberals, as well as the reasoning behind their policy choices. Two of the students dominated this discussion, bringing in evidence and viewpoints from outside the assigned readings. The other two students demonstrated that they had a grasp of the concepts, but were still uncomfortable making policy conjectures.

Moving into large group setting provided the opportunity for the students to begin constructing policies to deal with the questions of the bailout, healthcare, and energy and the environment. The other red teams appeared to have already discussed policy choices, and were able to determine the preferences of economic liberals from the voting sheet. My students contributed significantly to these conversations, and seemed to be able to see how the goals of economic liberals led to specific policies. We were short on time during this session due to a mix up with room reservations. If there had been more time, I feel that we would have been able to get discuss further the ethical arguments for and against economic liberal policy preferences. In the time we had, job creation and efficiency were brought up, but neither was discussed at length.

For me, the most exciting part of the conference was when the different viewpoints were jig-sawed. My students all seemed to learn a lot from learning about the other viewpoints and having to defend their own viewpoints. In these discussions, the social liberal groups tended to emphasize the cost for individuals in following economic liberal policies. My students were unsure of how to respond to these challenges, which was made more difficult for them as they tended to personally support the social liberal or hybrid viewpoints. However, this gave us the opportunity to discuss the benefits of a market based system, as well as the drawbacks of the social liberal preferences. After this session, my students seemed more confident in their ability to defend their position, and all were participating a great deal. Two of my students volunteered to defend their position in the final plenary, and all four of them worked together and with the other red economic liberals to clearly outline the arguments for the final session.

This conference provided a valuable learning experience for my students. By defending the economic liberal position, my students were able to learn the ways in which the market can be an effective tool for dealing with social problems and why it can be preferable to government-driven solutions. Engaging in discussions with the other viewpoints helped them to begin comparing the merits of the different policy options. It also provided the students with a foundation for coming to their own conclusions regarding the most appropriate policies for dealing with some of these problems, which I think was the most important thing to take away from this conference.