Goal Reflection

The semester is almost over! Being an IB student for one and a half years now, I have realized the benefits of reflecting on daily and academic activities.

The most prominent thing I think I have learned from these months of community, action and service was how I increased my awareness of my strengths and new areas of growth. I've realized that I'm strong in committing to my service and my action (tennis) but need improvement on actively reflecting and noting my creativity.

For creativity, I have done many collaborative work with others, such as Skylor (my co-leader), Ms. Raina (my community service supervisor), members from Cleft Palate into organizing the main event of Battle of the Bands where the library service sold drinks. My main creativity however, still lies in the service I did during WWW as I was the leader for the mural projects. I was happy that I got to show my creative side with my mural designs and also took a hands on approach with painting the murals as well. However, in the beginning of the semester I made the goal of regularly updating my personal art blog and failed to continue that.

I did not exactly fail to continue it but was advised to drop it by my CAS supervisor. Creating a blog to show off my personal artwork was not the correct approach to show my creativity as I am also an IB Visual Arts student. It would be tricky and suspicious if I put my drawings for creativity since I could also use those drawings for my IB Workbook. From this situation, I considered the ethical implications of my actions. As I do not want to create any problems for my CAS supervisor and I do have other areas I can support my creavity, I deleted my personal art blog.

For action, I still have continued tennis but temporarily stopped until the christmas break. This semester it was very very difficult to time manage school work and still commit to the tennis sessions. However, even though I had extended essay going on, internal assessments and portfolios due, I still managed to show commitment to tennis by attending sessions with Heesoo. We have learned more skills in tennis, refined previous skills learned and most importantly, played a really good game! In the beginning we were unable to even get the ball back and forth for more than 2 hits. Now we were able to hit the ball back and forth for atleast 10! It was really intense haha! I have not done any other official action as diving is impossible to do right now with my father's work schedule other than swimming for leisure.

During stressful times I enjoy going for a swim at the u.s. embassy's rec center as no one is there for most of the time. It is a quiet swim that I enjoy very much and I've tried to take a new (personal) challenge of swimming two weeks or so and it has been going well actually! I don't know how to swim properly so I've been trying to learn the proper strokes (particularly the front crawl or freestyle and breaststroke -i can never get the kick right) I should have put this on my CAS blog but I suppose it is too late now. During the christmas break I will surely upload some pictures of my (horrible) butterfly stroke haha!

Service is probably my best and most prominent area of CAS that I think I do well in. I take Library Service very seriously and try my best to support the causes of library service. I am not particularly strict with my group about organizing the library (as they are just children) and take the responsibility of organizing it myself for most of the time. However, I do give a hard time to the IB students (Onkar, Humza and Philipp) to organizing the library and do their cas blogs since they are IB students who should show IB qualities.

The big event that library service had this year was the fundraising for the Jaffna Library during the battle of the bands concert that cleft palate facilitated. As I mentioned before, we sold drinks (cola, sprite, juice and milo) and managed to make a nice profit of more than 18k rs. I'm really proud of that as that was a big challenge that we undertook and surpassed in!

I am however, disappointed in my involvement with book week. During the months prior to December Skylor and I collaborated with eachother and our service as to what we should do during the book week. We planned to make daily emails to everyone with small things (such as quotes about reading and it's importance), have a day where you have to dress up as your favorite book character and most importantly have students bring in books to donate but- many things went wrong with that week and I can't blame us for not being more active. Skylor went on Saisa to Dhaka and was unable to help out with book week. Also, the sad fact is that the secondary school is not interested in the promotion of books. We did not have an assembly prior to book week so we were unable to make any announcements. I am really disappointed with that though since I had high expectations that we were going to make book week the best week this year.

Despite that, I think library service managed to revive ourselves with the money we made during the battle of the bands concert and we were able to show our commitment to our activity. everyone in library service (except Sejuti -a middle school student who was not allowed to stay out late because of her parents) managed to come, buy a ticket from cleft palate and did a shift to prepare and sell drinks. I'm really proud of my service because they also took the activity seriously (but still managed to have fun).

So to conclude this reflection... did I manage to meet the goals I made this year?

I can say yes and no. I can say yes, as I have developed new skills in tennis, (a bit in swimming but that's off the record I suppose), organized and collaborated with more people than I ever imagined, engaged with an issue of global importance in library service (finally!) which was raising funds to donate and promote reading and education to a poorer community, and showed commitment to action and my service.

I can say no as well since I have not been the best with creativity as I would have liked to but still managed to make it up and because there is always room for improvement. I would like to make CAS and reflecting a part of my daily life more and more. The more I realize how CAS can help me grow as a person and round me out -the more I am keen to doing it.

Yes, this semester was the most challenging and I have slipped up quite a few times, but I am taking the challenge to do better next semester with everything, from academics to personal life to CAS. As I once heard from my Spanish teacher,

"Experience may not always be the kindest of teachers, however it is the best." -Spanish Proverb

Action Tennis

Will edit when heesoo gives me some pictures we took during october break and during november of tennis!!!

Library Service -Writing CAS Reports

This semester is almost over... meaning CAS is almost over!

For community Service

This year the all the community services have decided for all CAS leaders and supervisors to make reports on their members of their community service.

Today is one of the last days of CAS and Skylor has left to Dhaka for Saisa, so I'm in charge of his students! We have about 10 members so it's going to be a lot of writing for me. But I'm happy to do so since everyone in library service is extremely nice and hardworking.

Lets see how it goes~

Semester Reflection + a bit of CAS!

The semester of the school year 2011-2012 is coming to a fast end and what to do other than a good old reflection??

Below the reflection I wrote for my semester report card.

Like every school year, each semester goes by like a blink of an eye. However, this semester went by like the speed of light! During this semester I got to taste the real flavor of the IB Diploma Program and it was bitter. It seemed like there was a huge assignment due every week. Thankfully, I managed to get my all my internal and external assessments done, math portfolios but most importantly, my extended essay done.

This semester was filled with assignments and tests but, reflecting back on the whole experience, it left me with what I do well and what I don’t do that well. I realized that my study habits were off track when it came to time management. However, I realized that when I study, I can study from the beginning and study until I understand the concept.

I also collaborate easy with my classmates but struggle with working with my teachers or communicating my ideas properly to them. I saw that my thinking skills developed from the help of TOK. TOK has actually improved my thinking by making it more reasonable and made me justify my thoughts. From using TOK I am able to apply knowledge I’ve attained from other subjects and apply those to different areas of knowledge, for example, TOK into art and geography or my art into my geography.

From writing the Extended Essay and other assignments (like geography case studies and art) I realized that my use of information from sources was limited. Like many teenagers and in this age of computers, I heavily relied on the internet as a source of information. I managed to break away from this curse by visiting the library more often. Despite the small quantity of sources I used, I was and still am able to grasp facts and concepts easily.

Mentioning library, my CAS Library Service has developed me more as a person and as a leader. I have learned to collaborate with others and listen to others not only in my afterschool activity but with other activities as well. In particular, I collaborated with the Cleft Palate with organizing the Battle of the Bands concert to make profits for Room to Read. I have also kept up with my action, tennis with Heesoo however, do so at Royal Park (a complex where Heesoo lives).

Despite saying that the flavor of IB was bitter, in the end, it was really worth it and rewarding.

Cleft Palate Concert

Last Saturday (November 26) the CAS activity Cleft Palate held a Battle of the Bands concert to raise funds for surgeries for children with cleft palate. The Library Service originally had plans to do a movie night to raise funds however, due to the low popularity many CAS activities had with movie night, Skylor and I decided to go in a different direction to raise funds for Room to Read.

Since Skylor was already involved with organizing Battle of the Bands with Bharat and Rasmus (playing guitar and being an MC), we collaborated with Mr. Pradeep, the supervisor of the Cleft Palate CAS, and organized that Library Service would be selling drinks at the concert. Each week leading up to the concert Skylor and I went over with our CAS what we would be selling, how much of it, who would get cups for the drinks, and the shifts people would take during the concert to sell drinks.

I'm really happy to say that in the end, all of the Library Service was at the concert and respectively came to their assigned shifts. Alo brought about 600 cups (A HUGE thanks to her!!) and didn't complain about helping with her shift -in fact no one complained! It was a big relief for every member to have helped since this was a new challenge I've undertaken. I have never organized something this big with the community and it was really fun in the end.

Library Service made a profit of about 19,000 Rs. from selling drinks at the concert and selling leftover drinks to the canteen. We wouldn't have been able to sell any drinks without the help of Mr. Pradeep providing them though!

In the end, library service managed to make more money than originally planned with the movie night to donate to Room to Read. It really is fulfilling to raise money for Room to Read since it allows for me to be engaged with an issue of global importance, education and reading for children.

Throughout the whole process instead of just collaborating with Skylor, I collaborated with others, in this case, a whole other CAS Activity with organizing a part of their project. It was really interesting and a great experience.

Library Service Update!

Library Service in OSC has been normal for the last few weeks. Since the beginning everyone in library service has improved in their skills in organizing books and have become more comfortable in the library environment.

I'm really happy to say that the members of the library service (including myself and Skylor) have attended all community service sessions showing perserverance and commitment for our activity. I'm really proud as to how devoted we are despite going through IB (ahem, Extended Essay and Internal Assessments and SATs and World Lits and English Orals and tests that never seem to end...).

As the school approaches the Room to Read week, Skylor and I have to take a new challenge to raise funds. Room to Read is a program where schools raise funds to buy books and donate the books to less fortunate school. Skylor and I have collaborated with eachother and the whole library service group to make a fund raising event. This is Skylor and I undertaking a new challenge.

It was voted that we should do a movie night, previewing a movie for the whole secondary school on a Friday night while selling baked goods to also raise more money (a bake sale)! Every member of the group has decided to contribute to making the movie night happen or baking something to sell. The 11th grade Diploma Students have decided to take care of the movie (buying the movie, getting the auditorium ready for previewing, taking care of tickets and the cashier) while the lower grades students (mainly middle school students) have taken the opportunity to buy and sell baked goods and food -like popcorn and drinks. Skylor and I have decided to supervise everything and give a hand into what we do.

On Wednesday the 9th of November Skylor and I will be going infront of the Wednesday Assembly to commercialize our fund raiser. It will only be for the secondary students of OSC and it will be held on a Friday night (we are aiming for the 11th of November). We are planning to show the movie, Rush Hour 2 and showing the movie trailer in assembly. I really hope we can get a lot of people to come and watc this!

We still are in planning stages just in case something might go wrong. We have planned and initiated an activity and worked collaborately with others (teachers, the students, and staff of technology) to make this happen.

Fingers crossed!!

First Official Day of Library Service!!

Today was the first day of Community and Service and we had many newcomers to Library Service.

Like what Skylor and I had planned a few weeks ago, we stuck to our first day agenda of giving a small orientation about Library Service and dividing up the groups by middle school and high school. This method turned out to work very very well! We planned and initiated the activities meant to start on the first day and got everyone to work on sorting books.

By fate all the high schoolers Skylor took under his wing were guys and all my middle schoolers were girls! I think this turned out really well since it would be easier for us to collaborate with our groups. My group of girls were really hard working and loved being in the library and sorting out books (a very special group of girls indeed since they all have a desire to keep things in alphabetical order). They managed to quickly sort out all books and left us with time to all sit around a table and talk to each other.

Like I talked about in my last post, I really wanted to build a relationship with my groups. So what else could I do when we all sat around a table? Gossip of course! (Or just talk about school). Last year I never bothered talking to the students and this left them usually doing the work and being bored. This year I took a new challenge of trying to get to know my group personally and I think it went out well. We all managed to talk about something and laughed about Twilight and I think we bonded in a way. I think this simple act of getting to know each other will help everyone collaborate with one another easily and make Service more enjoyable.

I'm really happy with the way we started Library Service this year and I hope we keep going in this direction.

Community Service Leaders Meeting

Today was the first proper meeting of all the community service leaders. The community service leaders met together with their supervisors in the SMPR and discussed the plans for the first semester. Topics included how the services would deal withe the major problems of attendance, absences, writing an individual student report on their service, Service blogs, Key Club and any other subjects that applied to the individual community service.

Skylor and I attended this meeting but were not able to meet Ms. Reina to discuss issues we felt needed to be addressed. However we will go to her before library service begins and go over our plan for the first semester.

Unlike last year, Skylor and I have decided to limit and divide up the library service students. Last year about 14 students attended library service making the workload small for everyone and caused the service to end early. We decided to let in about 8-10 students who we think would be willing to work.

Before all students were obliged to organize books. However we felt that it shouldn't apply to everyone. We decided to split the service from grades 6-8 into one group and 9-11 in another group. I will be taking the grade 6-8 group and Skylor the 9-11. The younger group will be responsible for most books (non fiction) because it is easier to sort out. The older group will be responsible for sorting fiction books or magazines, making labels for books, and taking care of the library service blog. We both agreed that it is essential to get the library service blog up and running to communicate to parents and the school community of what we're doing. We think that the type of work and workload posed on the two different aged groups is appropriate and efficient.

Today we focused on how we will conduct the first session of library service. We want to introduce library service to our group and lay out ground rules on attendances/absences (since it was a big problem last year) and encourage more interest into library service. I really want to interact more with our students to build a better relationship and hopefully make them look forward to community and service every Thursday.

Another big issue Skylor and I discussed was the event of Book Week coming around the end of first semester. Last year we felt that Book Week did not get enough publicity and ultimately did not live up to what it could have. We began planning out what we could do to raise the popularity of Book Week and make students excited for the most beautiful week of school! Examples are sending out more news letters, coming up with promotional videos, having more reading days, cosplays of favorite book characters and perhaps publish creative writing pieces made by students. We have great ideas and are really excited to see how it goes!

Lastly a topic that the community service wanted to go over as a whole was the idea of community leaders writing student reports and student reflections. Since at the end of the year most report cards do not address the service aspect we're deciding on making service reports on each individual. Skylor and I really want to make personal reports on each individual's performances in library service. We also want students to make their own reflections to allow them to discover and reflect on what they did and make them feel good about doing something for the community!

We have a lot planned for library service this year! We're willing to spend a lot of time and put in a lot of effort to making this year a fun and enjoyable service.

Grade 12 - The final year!

IB has resumed after a (very) short break of two months! Despite this year being the last year of IB there is no time to rest. With the start of school, the Service of CAS is starting up again and there is a need to put in some goals for the coming months.

Goals for 2012

Creativity

It's obvious that the creativity part of my CAS has been lacking due to putting more attention to Action (Tennis) and Service (Library Service). I've decided to put more time and effort into my creativity than action since I've spent many hours playing tennis with Heesoo. I am really keen to updating my art blog to expose my art work and explain my work. I believe that it's a good habit not only for CAS but also to help me with IB art. It will be a new challenge for me to consistently be updating my art blog.

Action

I will be resuming tennis in a few weeks with my partner Heesoo. Depending on the our tennis coach’s schedule, we will be visiting the Taj once a week (or possibly once every two weeks because I want to focus on my creativity) to learn how to play tennis for about 1 to 1 and a half hours. Even though we have learned many skills there are more skills and new techniques we have yet to inquire.

Service

Library service will be resuming in two weeks time. Already Skylor and I have met together and collaborated with eachother – mainly discussing how we will be organizing library service and events like Book Week. We are both really motivated to raise the reputation of library service and give the library a new light to the whole school community. We’re also giving library service a lot more time and commitment than we were last year since it is our senior year and we plan to continue to do so.

For now these are my goals for my CAS. I hope this year will be a good one!!

Library Service

Lately each week of Library service has been the same. Tomorrow, Thursday 26 will be the last library service and Skylor and I (the group leaders of Library Service) have planned to throw a small party.

Library service basically consists of organizing the books in the library through shelving and creating labels for books. For the second semester we haven't done anything related to other projects (such as book week).

Despite having quiet Thursday afternoons Skylor and I have been able to develop a better relation with eachother. We are able to collaborate with eachother on who should do certain things and when to release the younger students from the CAS. Also I've developed my skills of organization and I'm able to check books quicker.

The best thing I think I can say about Library Service (that isn't related to CAS) is that it's made me read more. Organizing the books on the shelves has given me opportunities to know where certain books are and look through them. Because of the time I get with the books it's encouraged me to check out more books in the library and read more in general.

Week Without Walls

This year the grade 11 went to Hanbantota, a city located on the southern tip of Sri Lanka. The trip lasted from the 24th-28th of January. On this trip our goal was to refurnish a local primary school and donate supplies to the children.

A few weeks before the trip, our group 11.1 or the "Cha-group" organized the groups to work on certain things like murals, painting, and playing with the children. The organization was made with everyone in our group having their say.

I was chosen to be in charge of creating and painting the murals by my classmates. Personally, I was surprised that people nominated me to be the leader because I've never done anything like this. Although I was surprised, I gained awareness that I did have the ability to create a mural and could undertake this new challenge.

The school we went to wanted a few ideas for different walls. I came up with the subjects of a carnival, a playground, and an aquarium for three walls. The playground went on the big wall, and the aquairum and carnival went on two small side walls. I want to note that I didn't make certain sketches for each mural. Instead, I made

everyone include their own idea of what to put in (for example for the playground mural I made Camille put something she wanted which was a dog and a sun). Since I was the leader of the murals, I tried to put some of my focus each mural people were making and helped them out. All of these things allowed me to collaborate with

others and succeed in taking this unfamiliar challenge as well as developing new skills of working and talking with others.

Preparing the wall by sandpapering some bumps before we started painting.

A picture of me painting a rainbow on the scariest ladder ever. Mo got the easy job of sitting and watching me. :P

Although making a mural seems like an easy job, many problems arose that my group had to work with. A big problem we encountered was the shortage of paint... particularly green (which was for the grass of the playground). Even with this challenge we came up with alternatives like mixing some water with the remaining green paint, changing the flat landscape into hills, and mix the yellow and blue paints to make a green. I was really proud of my group of showing perseverance and commitment to getting this mural done. In the end, our mural turned out well made and beautiful! We were all proud of ourselves for that!!

Our beautiful mural!

Each time before we would do the physical work of refurnishing the school, everyone had to play with the children. It was difficult playing with the children because of the language barrier, but in the end it was a nice experience. In the www during grade 10 I didn't volunteer to play with the children because I was uncomfortable with children. However this time I was able to do better because I learned a few Sinhalese words and drew with the children. I was put into this new environment and forced to adapt. In the end I think I gained the new skills of speaking horrible Sinhalese and making a fool of myself to make a child laugh (once).

Me in the middle with the children. Sadly, not the happiest photo.

This action and service was carried out for two days. It was a great experience as we engaged with issues of global importance of giving the less fortunate better facilities and having a great time. :)