Upon arriving at the Rhodes Center, we met other TeenPacters and the staff. Today mainly consisted of learning the ground rules, TPL (Teen Pact Legislature) and committee break-ups. For the rest of the week, we'll get to pretend that we're representatives and debate bills in committees before presenting to the "house" or TPL. It's pretty fun. I'm on the Health and Aging committee, so we got assigned some interesting bills.
Before TPL started this afternoon, we did something called first reads. Each student is required to write at least one bill to be presented before the TPL. Everyone came up, read a short portion of the bill and then it was assigned to the different committees.
There were a number of humorous bills read during first reads. My favorite funny bill is from last year and it was to start doing the Hunger Games in the state of Ohio. Last year, my committee got this bill and we decided to move it to the "house" to be discussed. We actually passed the bill.
Since committees had not yet had the opportunity to debate bills, we used one that the staff put together. It was on education and requiring all teachers (public, private, home) to receive certification in each subject that they teach. So, the homeschool parent would have to be "certified" in math, english, science and a large number of things. Thankfully, the bill did not pass.
We also heard a few lectures by a lobbyist and the director of the state TeenPact class. Tomorrow looks to be about the same. We'll be leaving the house at 7 AM (I'm not exactly looking forward to that) and class will go until 3 PM. I glanced briefly at the material for the Alumni track and it looks pretty awesome. But, I won't talk about that just yet. I'll keep you all in suspense for another day.
 | ||
| From left to right: Colton, Spencer, Curtis, Me, Kit-Kat, Abbie, Marisa and Lily. |
No comments:
Post a Comment