For many people, doing a thing is the best way to learn about it. That is what the YMCA's Youth in Government program offers. Middle and high school students participate in a 3-day model government that gives them a hands-on experience in lawmaking.
"I urge you to support this bill," said Lilliana Henderson at the end of her floor testimony.
Henderson was a senator at the Youth in Government conference put on by the YMCA of Metro Denver.
"I wrote a bill about making driver's ed a 1/2-credit mandatory course for all Colorado high schools," she told CBS News Colorado.
She took questions and proposed an amendment to make her bill stronger.
"I've never gone this far, so I'm excited," she said.
The Pueblo West High School student still faced opposition.
"$20,000 a year is not nearly enough for the roughly 300,000 minors between 15- to 18-year-olds who need drivers ed," said Evan Simmons during a negation speech against the bill's amendment.
Simmons serves as a committee chair but also is in the Governor's Cabinet, which means his testimony is an indication of how the Youth Governor feels about the bill.
"It's very interesting to give a negation speech because you don't want to make someone mad," he explained. "You have to really be okay with a group of people liking you and a group of people hating you and trying to find that middle ground as good as possible."
That sums up democratic politics at its best. The Youth in Government Conference sums up lawmaking. Over three days, the students debate, lobby, and compromise on the issues they feel impact the state.
"Youth in Government is really that opportunity for us to gather and bring our ideas together even though they might be vastly different and really try to find this middle ground," Simmons added.
The bills introduced at Youth in Government won't change Colorado law, but they do address issues about which the students are passionate.
"I know a lot of people who've been in car accidents, and recently, over the summer, I lost two friends in a car accident," Henderson said about why she introduced a bill that brings driver's education back into the school.
The conference is the culmination of three months of work that the students do in their home schools. Then during the conference they practice parliamentary procedure as they try to turn their ideas into laws. There are legislators, lobbyists, judges, and journalists each playing their role at the conference.
"It is good practice for youth to eloquently practice respectful debate," said Maelin Rennemeyer, this year's Youth Governor.
Rennemeyer not only had final say on what bills passed and what failed; she also improved the conference itself.
"I realized that we are lacking a Secretary of State, and we have nobody overseeing our election committees and how campaigning is running and election night," she explained.
That's why Rennemeyer added that new elected position, leaving her mark on this 71-year-old Colorado tradition.