My Final Reflection of CAS

After two years of new experiences, taking part in a variety of different activities and working together with my fellow IB peers, it has finally arrived to this: The final post...

As I have said previously in my older posts, The International Baccalaureate programme was whole new experience to me. The IB is far different from any of the other international syllabi I have done in the past and one of these differences is CAS. CAS has truly changed me as student and as well as a person. If someone were to tell me that I should do an after school activity, I would probably choose a couple of sports like Cricket and Tennis and be done with it. However, CAS made me challenge myself. It required me to do activities that involve Creativity, Action and Service. I have barely ever taken part creative or community service related activities in the past so this was a real challenge for me because I needed to go outside my comfort zone. I can honestly say I am glad I did so because I've been able to see so much more potential in me that is not just in the Action category. It was exciting to do activities that fall in to three different categories and so I really tried to give my best effort in each of them. I continued to play Tennis as always and then later joined SAISA Badminton in grade 12. But I also took part in two community service activities; Recycling and Sustainability, and SOS Orphanage, and two creative activities; Drums and a leadership role in Cricket. I have become two things I never thought I would be; a musician and a leader!

Since I have already made a final reflection on Service, I will only reflect on Creativity and Action in this post. Initially for Creativity, I started to learn how to play drums in the beginning of grade 11. The first few lessons were exciting and strange at the same time. I'm used to seeing drummers on YouTube who would rock out and play amazing drum solos! However in my first lessons, I wasn't doing anything even close to what I consider drumming. However, as the lessons progressed I realized that the beats were actually starting to come together. More lessons passed and I was beginning to play all kinds of beats such as the Rock beat, Punk, Waltz, Cha-Cha, Mumba, "Funky Town", Baila, Oriental and so on. I had developed a new skill and that was drumming. Recently, I even started to learn how to read sheet music; another new skill. It was in drums that I learnt the importance of patience as well as perseverance. If had lost interest and quit in the first few lessons then I would not be here today trying to play along to some of my favorite AC/DC and Nirvana songs. I showed great deals of perseverance and commitment to see that I would carry on playing drums for the remaining two years. In Cricket, I did my first ever leadership role along with my co-leaders, Shwetank and Shubanshu. This was a fun new experience for me because I learnt to plan and initiate activities for each Cricket session and take part in the sport as well. Every lesson, I grew as a leader and I was seeing my true potential for the first time.

Going to my Service activities was something I really loved doing and looked forward to every week. In grade 11, I took part in my first service activity which was Recycling and Sustainability. In this activity, we went around the school collecting paper from all the recycling boxes in each room and then took it down to the recycling place to sell it. It was fairly simple task but it was a great community service at the same time. Unlike most of the other service activities in OSC where service was provided to people, Recycling provided a service to the environment. In Recycling, I was directly engaging with an issue of global importance. This service was important because keeping a clean environment and to be an international school that recognizes the global importance of recycling is very honorable. Later on from semester 2 of grade 11 till now, I took part in SOS Orphanage. This was very different from what we did in Recycling. Children from the SOS Orphanage Village in Colombo would come our school every Thursday. We then proceeded to teach them English, math and gave a presentation on a particular country. The highlight of the activity was the swimming session. We would all go down to the pool to teach them how to swim and guide them through it for the next hour. On lazy days, we would have a game of piggy in the middle (monkey in the middle). SOS was really fun because we learnt to communicate and engage with the children, as well as just have fun with them. Service required teamwork and I feel that I have definitely been able to work collaboratively with others to give the children a great experience here at OSC.

IB CAS may have ended here, but the Creativity, Action and Service in me will continue to grow and thrive. I hope to continue to play drums, try out more sports and certainly try to take up a leadership role in a community service in the future :-)

Final Reflection: SOS Orphanage

At the beginning of the year, I set out to achieve four goals for service. These are:

• Prove that I can follow the examples of the leaders in SOS Orphanage and achieve tasks with my best effort applied to them. Then, reflect on my experiences and of all the self accomplishments in the service sessions.
• Formulate my own service activity either in school or outside, or take up a leadership role in an already existing service activity.
• When the second goal has been accomplished; reflect on my first days' work as a leader as well as prove that I am capable enough to continue my leadership role.
• Reflect on my overall experience of service work by the end of this year and show how I have grown as a service volunteer as well as how it has affected me.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to accomplish the second and third goals as specified by the goals. However, I was able to take up a leadership role in an after-school activity; Cricket. Since this activity does not involve helping the community in need but rather providing a service students in our school, this activity only falls under the creativity aspect of CAS. But even though I did not take up a service leadership role, I'm still proud that I took up a leadership role. This is something I have never done before and so it was a great experience for me. I learnt to take more responsibility in to my hands as well as learnt to collaborate with my fellow co-leaders. I carried out my leadership role for the entire semester. The kids were always very enthusiastic to play Cricket and their favorite was doing the high catches practices (besides the match at the end). Overall I felt that it was a great learning experience and has definitely helped me out for my future. 

I strongly believe that I have accomplished my first goal. During the service sessions I learnt to communicate better with kids much younger than me as well as developed my English and Math teaching skills. I feel that I really tried my best during during swimming sessions. One of my favorite moments was when I was able to get a kid to swim complete laps, when before he wouldn't even stay away from the pool edge because he was scared of the water. This happened in just 2 lessons. He and I both tried our best to make it happen. 

Service at OSC has been a great experience for me. I took part in two service activities, Recycling and Sustainability and SOS Orphanage. In both activities I met amazing people and we all worked collaboratively to achieve all that we set out to do. Given the fact that this was the first time I have ever taken part in a service activity at a school, I feel that I have accomplished a lot during these two years of service. 

Badminton: on the team!

On the 10th of Monday, our coaches Mr Pradeep and Mr De Silva announced who is in the final Badminton team for SAISA. Of the 25 students, only 8 boys and 6 girls are chosen to be on the team. So it is a difficult task to get on the team and I'm proud to say that I have been chosen to be on the final 8 SAISA team. This is a big accomplishment for me because I have never been to Badminton classes before SAISA this year. Since the beginning of SAISA Badminton, I feel that I had shown great deals of perseverance and commitment to the sport, and it's this that allowed me to be chosen for the team. I've developed new skills and improved my existing ones such as in service, lob (hitting the shuttle to the far back), drop (hitting the shuttle close to the net) and the smash (hitting it hard vertically down). Since we have to play both singles and doubles matches, we are required to work collaboratively with others in order to advance in the game. I feel I have done this well in our practice sessions and will continue to do so.

SOS Orphanage: My Presentation on Pakistan

On our last SOS Orphanage service session, I was meant to give the country presentation for that session. The country I chose to present was Pakistan because I had lived there for 2 years and so I have some experience with the culture. Unfortunately, the kids were not able to come to the session and so the service was cancelled for that day. I will be giving my presentation on our next session.

SOS Presentation - Pakistan from 4kila

Sheet Music for Drums

Up until now, I have always played drum beats by memory and learned them by copying what my drums teacher demonstrated to me. Many drummers prefer to do this as opposed to learning how to read Sheet Music and play according to what it says. My teacher recommended that I learn to read Sheet Music as well because it would help me in the long run. I decided to take this opportunity to undertake a new challenge and started to learn how to read it in the previous lesson. I learnt a lot in that short time span. I feel that I have definitely developed a new skill because I am able to read and play the notes well according to my teacher. Since drummers to not have to exactly play notes, but rather a specific pattern, I think I should be able to learn how to fluently read Sheet Music very soon.

 

Badminton

We are slowly nearing April which is when we will finally have our SAISA Badminton games, where schools from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Oman come to OSC for a week of Badminton. These games, like the other SAISA sports, are very important and the participants are required to have had an ample amount of training before playing the matches. Over these few weeks, I feel I have shown perseverance and commitment in to this sport in order to make the final 5 SAISA team. Every lesson, I've developed new skills in the sports, the last skills being efficient placement of the shots and moving in the court.

Me doing a short serve

Playing a drop shot

SAISA Badminton (and Goals)

This semester, I decided to join the tryout lessons for SAISA badminton (season 4). The tournament is to take place in our school during the first week of April. Although the tournament is very close to our May examinations, I feel I can still be able to commit to the sport since we won't be travelling to the play the tournament.

I have never played badminton at a competitive level or even been to any classes. However, I still decided to to join SAISA badminton because I feel that I will be able to apply the skills I acquired playing tennis in to badminton as well. This is not an easy task because although both sports are played using rackets, there are some significant differences between the two that I need to work on. The first being that badminton is not played with a ball, so the amount of power apply to a shot will be different. Other differences include, tennis involves the movement of the entire arm with a stiff wrist while playing shots, however, badminton involves a loose wrist while playing shots.

I have addressed all these issues and I think I have got a good handle of the game. On the 3rd of February, Our coaches, Mr Pradeep and Mr De Silva, formed two groups, Group A and Group B. Group A consists of player who have good skills and are likely to make the final SAISA squad. Group B consists of everyone else who still needs to work on their skills. People can move up from B to A and they can also go down from A to B. I was placed in Group A which I took as a good achievement and as proof that I was able to address the issues I had in the beginning. Of course, I would have to work hard to keep my place by being consistent and constantly improving.

My Goals for SAISA Badminton:
- Prove that I am capable of getting a place in the final 5 of the SAISA squad.
- Show that I can win matches in the SAISA tournament and reflect on my experience in the tournament.
- Reflect on my overall experience with badminton and compare my skills to the skills I had when I first started out badminton.

Reflection on Grade 12 semester 1 and reviewing of the Goals (part 3)

Service

My first goal for the service is about achieving all tasks given by my service leaders.

Prove that I can follow the examples of the leaders in SOS Orphanage and achieve tasks with my best effort applied to them. Then, reflect on my experiences and of all the self accomplishments in the service sessions.

I feel that I have certainly achieved this goal for semester 1 and I will continue to do so for semester 2 as well. Our basic tasks in SOS Orphanage are to teach the kids some English and Maths, then teach them about a country via a PowerPoint presentation and then finally head down to pool and teach them swimming. I have been able to do 2 out of 3 of these tasks, I have still to give a presentation about a country. This is something I hope to do soon before the end of the interim. Nevertheless, throughout the semester, we have planned and initiated our activities whilst working collaboratively with each other in order to give the SOS children a fun learning experience here at OSC. My biggest accomplishment this semester was probably helping a kid who was very scared of the water, to move away from the sides of the pool and swim a complete lap (width). It took some time but in the end, it was rewarding to see him overcome his fears of the water.

My second and third goals are based on taking part in my own service activity as a leader.

Formulate my own service activity either in school or outside, or take up a leadership role in an already existing service activity.

When the second goal has been accomplished; reflect on my first days' work as a leader as well as prove that I am capable enough to continue my leadership role.

Though I was not able to obtain a leadership role in a service activity, I have however been able to obtain a leadership role in Cricket, which is regarded as a Creative and Action activity. Shwetank, Shubanshu and I became leaders of the After School Activity (ASA) Cricket, which is an activity where students from grades 6 and up can come to play cricket with us whilst learning some cricket skills as well. This was one of my favorite activities I did this year because of my love for Cricket. Since the beginning of the year, my co-leaders and I worked collaboratively and show perseverance and commitment in to being good leaders of this sport at OSC. We got good feedback from the kids in our ASA and I could see their improvement from the beginning of the semester to end of it.

My final goal is:

Reflect on my overall experience of service work by the end of this year and show how I have grown as a service volunteer as well as how it has affected me.

Since this year hasn't ended yet, I have yet to accomplish this goal completely. However, I have had a great experience so far in CAS and I can see that I have changed in terms of my perspective of CAS and its global importance especially in the Service aspect.

Reflection on Grade 12 semester 1 and reviewing of the Goals (part 2)

Action

My first goal for Action is to compare the improvement of my tennis skills over the course of two years.

Compare and reflect on the my skills at tennis by the end of this year with the skills I had when I started out the diploma programme. 

When I first started out the Diploma Programme at OSC, I was not new to tennis. I have mentioned this before as well. I had stopped for a while to focus on exams so I had some warming up to do in order to get back my momentum of the sport. I feel that I have been able to both do this, as well as significantly improve my skills over the past two years. This is mainly due to me showing more perseverance and commitment to tennis since the beginning of IBDP.

My second goal is about taking part in tennis competitions.

Take part in more competitions this year which include contenders with high amounts of skill. The previous year I completed my goal of taking part in a competition organized outside class where my doubles partner (Hemeka) and I made it to the quarter-finals. This year, I hope to take part in that same tournament-which is an annual event. I hope to reflect on my experience as well as evaluate my skills in Tennis and in all the competitions.

I have been able to partially achieve this goal. I did take part in another competition however it was not the same SSC open tennis tournament I played last time. This was a tennis tournament for everyone in my class, along with the more experiences adult students who go for coaching from my teacher as well. The adults proved to be my biggest challenge, but Hemeka and I were able to win quite a few games by the end of the tournament. I was able to work collaboratively with my partner during this tournament and to make an effective team.  

My final goal is about winning in a tennis competition(s).

Obtain a place in the podium by the end of a tournament and then by the end of the year, reflect on my overall experience that I had in Tennis during the course of two years and show the transition from how I stood last year and how I will stand by the end of this year.

This was a goal I made to last to the end of the two years of CAS. However, in that last tournament I played which included everyone in my tennis class, Hemeka and I were able to work collaboratively in order to obtain a third place position by the end of the tournament. This was a points based tournament as opposed to the SSC open knock-out based tournament. I'm proud that I was able to do this and I feel I have increased awareness of my strengths and areas for growth.