#cas reflections

October brought on even more work, especially academically connected. I felt very tired and I didn’t have much energy. However, after every dancing session or ride I felt a lot better than before and a little more motivated to do my assignments. During those activities I focused on relaxing and forgetting about all the schoolwork, and it worked very well. Tutoring my friend went on as usual, we tried to schedule regular meetings and to be as productive as possible.

February A I’ve just come back from the horse riding camp (Rancho Pcim) which took me one week of my winter break. I don’t consider this time wasted. I spent a wonderful time with the people who share the same passion as I do. Frankly speaking, it was really challenging especially at the beginning.  I chose the „sport” version of the camp, which means I had either horse jumping training or dressage one. Due to the fact that I hadn’t been jumping for at least 3 years, my first hour of horse jumping was terrible, I felt like I had forgotten almost everything, and the fact that we were jumping parkour of the really small height (around 60cm) would make me feel any better. After a week of practising, I saw huge progress, but now I have a dilemma whether I should change the stable where I ride on a regular basis or not. Because of this holidays in the saddle, I was reminded how much IK used to love horse jumping and I would love to train it regularly to be able to participate in competitions, what is not possible in riding centre I am currently located at. Unfortunately better horse riding centres are farther from my house and taking this sport seriously would cost me a lot of determination and commitment and time. I will have to think about all the pros and cons of that and make my decision soon. I had a lot of walks in the mountains this week, as well as yoga because, in my opinion, it is a great way to deal with the muscle sores intensive training. Learning outcomes: 1, 2, 3, 4

https://medium.com/@tabisamra/sagesse-high-school-ibdp-i-students-reflect-on-their-cas-experience-873ab543135f

For Spanish National Honor Society (SHH) we have the opportunity to go to Vose, a Spanish Immersion Elementary school, and help at running club, organized by my friend, Meredith, for her CAS project. SHH has previously worked with Vose for homework help so I felt this wouldn’t be too different of an experience than I was use to. However I was wrong, it was chaotic at best. The children were impossible to control, running around and talking over Meredith. It was shocking to see how disrespectful these 3rd through 5th graders were. I understood that they were only children and it was the end of the day. However, I felt they could have at least listened a little bit and then played. We had several stations the children rotated through, spending 10 minutes at each station, all set up as games with running involved. It was difficult to rotate the groups and the children wouldn’t listen to or follow instructions, instead they played with each other. It was very difficult to maintain even a small amount of control and regulations over the group so to some extent we just had to let them do their own thing and watch to make sure they didn’t hurt themselves. While previous to this activity I believed I could handle groups of children without much excursion, this experience made me realize it isn’t always a walk in the park.

I had nominated myself for the role of student council president and submitted a letter of application to Mr. Storer late August this year. Following the application, I had made a speech in front of the student body and been voted to take on the role of president in the student council. I'd been a student representative for 3 years straight and I believe that I have the capability to effectively communicate and find ways to sustainably resolve issues reported by the student body, be them major or minor. Along with my council members, and by the end of my term as President, the SRC has nearly met our goal for the Loreto Project. As my term ended at the beginning of semester 2 in order for myself to focus on the May exams, we reached over 14,000,000VND, only 3,000,000 away from our initial goal. Events and initiatives we’ve taken include the Spirit Week, cafeteria food survey, rubrik cube competition, candy jar game, junior disco, and more. I have also had two SRC meetings every week, one with the executive board and one with the the full council. Sometimes there is a third meeting with the Deputy Principal to keep him posted with our progress. There have been ups and downs in being a part of the council, and we ran into issues of miscommunication at some points. However, I believe that my term has been fairly successful and I’ve completed it with satisfaction. LO3. Along with other SRC’s and some senior representatives outside of the SRC, I have successfully organized events to fundraise, promote, and publicize the causes recognized by the council. It can be difficult to work with a large group of individuals because communication can be hindered through language or occasional member truancy. LO4. As there are students of ages ranging from years 7 to 13, opinions and ideas on execution and prioritization have definitely varied. The degree of causes and their priority were controversial, but these were eventually determined by the popularity of the reports and sources of the issue. I think that collaboration was the hardest aspect of being in any group or council, because we are required to respect each other’s points of view and ideas. LO5. We also needed to be reliable and responsible for any task assignment and share the work load. Each of us have missed a meeting unwillingly - or even willingly - for other activities. However, the achievements of the entire council cannot be neglected. I needed to make sure that the SRC is amongst my top priorities and attended almost all of the meetings when notified.

LO1. The main area for growth in this activity are my practical as well as theoretical music skills. Along with the guitar I learned to read music and to compose. Reading music has always been a challenge for me since I am slow at translating notes and symbols. I think by consistently attending lessons each week I have overcome this problem and become a more well-rounded student.  LO5. As the year was extremely busy with lessons, assignments, exams and school events, it was increasingly challenging to fit everything inside an organized schedule. I needed to be smart in time management, and also committed to learning guitar because after a period without practice my finger movement will not be as quick and accurate. I was able to fit in 15 minutes of brief practice most nights after I completed my tasks for school. LO8. I developed new versatile skills during the process of learning the guitar. On the course of mastering this instrument there were numerous new strumming techniques and chords for me to learn. These skills can be used to help me socialize and contribute more to our school, as well as anywhere I may go in the future.