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. :)

Scuba Diving over??

My scuba diving session, confined water diving is now over. I took the scuba diving test last sunday. My instructor went over basic physics questions (that I find complicated) that would be on the test before I took the written test.

My first try didn't go so well... I got 70% when I needed 75% to pass. Just a few questions I misunderstood because I didn't read properly. My instructor went over the wrong answers with me and explained the correct ones.

My second try, on the other hand, went extremely well. I passed with a 90%. I was extremely happy and tired afterwards. I've finally finished the hardest part of scuba diving and now I don't have to worry about it.

In a few weeks I'll be able to dive into the ocean and see aquatic life. I'm really excited!

That's all for this week.

Last Scuba Diving Lesson

On Sunday (Oct. 17) I had my last scuba diving lesson (Confined water diving #5).

In my last lesson I took 4 quizzes before I went into the water. The 4 quizzes were all on sections that we went over in the confined water diving lessons before (1,2,3, and 4). I had the option of taking the exam to get my scuba diving license, however I just didn't feel up to the challenge and I wanted more time to study.

The quizzes consisted of basic physics questions (ex. what would your pressure be under 10 meters, 20 meters, etc...) and of course, scuba diving questions! Example, what is the number 1 rule of scuba diving? (Always breathe of course. :) ) And like those. I really struggled with the physics questions (which were like half questions on the quizzes) ... so I decided I'd go over them more this week and take the exam again on Saturday or before.

After taking the quizzes to see where I was (which took about 2 hours), we finally finished our 5 confined water diving session. We learned 4 new skills; taking your weight belt off and putting it on again underwater, taking your BCD off and on again underwater, taking your weight belt on the surface and putting it back on, and lastly, taking your BCD off and on again at the surface. The lesson was really quick, so my dive instructor proposed we did a small collaboration of some skills.

For this collaboration, we would enter the water with a roll-in entry. After, we would go to the bottom and again take off our weight belt and BCD and put it back on. When that was over, we needed to go to the surface and swim 2 lengths of the pool using our snorkel and changing from snorkel to regulator every three breaths. Finally, when all that was done, we'd go back down again to act out a 'no air' situation with our partner and do 'buddy breathing'. Finally, we could go back up to the surface to go home. :)

It was a really good lesson (mainly because it was quick) and I figured out I really needed to study more. I'm happy to say that the confined water dives are over, because it was a real pain to wake up early and go to the pool. However, at the end of each lesson, it was really worth it because it was quite fun. :)

I still need to take final exam and have 2 open sea dives. My father is planning to go around mid-end of November because that's when the sea is at its calmest. After that, I can officially obtain my scuba diving license. BUT, this is not the end of scuba diving for me. My father and I plan to go out and scuba diving at least once a month, (where that will be, no idea) but it's a good goal to have.

That is all for this week. Still have some more scuba diving to look forward to.