March 5

GC: 5/3/19

What we achieved today:

  • took stock of products in GC room
  • determined prices
  • somehow sold $36 worth of products to GC members (this made us more than family festival last time I went, where our sales solely comprised of the GC shirt I bought [compulsory] and a fan – which amounted to around $30)

 

What could have went better in my opinion, and how I could do better

  • people stood around
    • could have put them in small groups to value each product, and ask groups to cross-check
    • Chair was more effective in getting peoples’ attention – should be more explicit in communications with chair.
  • Forgot to ask people about whether they would want to sell cotton candy or GC products on family festival – got too carried away with counting stock and got priorities messed up.
  • Exhausting for me. Why do I have to be the one to take out the stock and sort through it and ask people to count it and record it while other people get to play with the marble game I took out with the stock? Taking out the stock is a one person job but it really doesn’t help that people are standing around chatting while I lay it out – would be nice if they were more attentive. And some items didn’t have that much stock – so they finished before I could record it – but it also wouldn’t work to ask them to take out their laptops because it takes people forever to find the needed documents and they get distracted too easily.
    • Did not have time to finish lunch; for my wellbeing, I’ll have to prioritise that next week.
    • Upon discussion with friends, this is a delegation issue. Quoting Anumita: “the problem is when you tell someone to do something and they don’t do it, you just do it yourself” – It really is simpler this way, instead of having to interrupt people’s conversations. Next time, when planning for sessions, I should consider think how the work will be split up.

LO 4 Show commitment to and perseverance in your CAS experiences

LO 5 Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

 

Currently listening to the old chair’s CAS reflections on GC. I think we need to learn from her when it comes to helping members understand the GCs cause, (group discussions, asking prompting questions) we don’t do that enough after the leadership changeover. Personally, I never felt it was particularly useful in the past, but now I realise its better than nothing. I should also try get voice projection – very relevant to this session as we were doing a stocktake. (Don’t think you’ll need voice projection of that eh?)

How does she remain so calm? Are my expectations too high? People are spending their lunch breaks here, I should understand that they are not all so enthusiastic about starting a milk tea stall… This reminds me of the time when I did art classes outside of school, and once I had some sort of ‘assessment’ – I excited to paint on A2 paper just as the teacher was surprised at my excitement. To this day I don’t understand why she would be surprised, the paper was 4 times as big as what I got to draw on normally, and at that time, it felt like a once in a lifetime opportunity. Do I always get excessively excited about small things? I don’t see it that way but I do notice some GC members are more intrigued by their laptops than by the prospect of doing something purposeful.

Perhaps, instead of thinking of how to streamline GC efficiency, I should be considering how to make it more fun for the members. In DT we are learning about lean production – I’ve been unconsciously trying to apply production line processes to running a global concern – its important for GCs to be fun, and these past 2 sessions have made me feel like the greatest fun-spoiler. From sending chain mail to reminding people to count stock. (in my defense I’m only following service dep procedures – practically, did the stock need to be counted? no. Is it good to count it? Yes, for transparency, accounting, and generally keeping organised) Next session, I’ll think of how to plan it to cater to GC members’ needs.

Summary of what I will do next time: (see next week’s GC post for how these turned out)

  • Discuss meeting plan with Tony next session: see how we will arrange people to get things done. Don’t try to do everything myself. That was ineffective and a mistake. Its supposed to be collaborative.
  • Make sure I finish my lunch
  • Make family festival info into kahoot?

To-do list for next session

12/3/19

Item Time

Done?

√ when done

 People responsible Notes
Service stuff

We need teacher supervisors!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WxXkGCK9vhvYWxRQ8gGVhI-CG944eBR8HIEGKshrgRc/edit?ts=5c7c63fa

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d-TVS_LdePCttS_BNVDKYn7b3sH4e45Fgra2_95ryNI/edit?ts=5c7c5dea
Get people to pay for shirts

7 ppl, 4 shirts

10*4/7 ~ 5.70 each

Brief ppl about family festival

Family festival info (tell ppl about this)

* info is a mess, will need sorting through

This is kind of optional but good to have
Pricing cards Will need like 3 people to sit aside and make these Prices here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1U0OAURk7NMZAp9X9RTugFozx07M5GJFIQ0QzE1hVy2Y/edit?ts=5c77911c#gid=0

 

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February 26

GC: 26/2/19

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February 22

Project Week Reflection 1: Investigation

written 2019/2/14

What my group has completed so far

  • find destination
  • find activity provider
  • get our project approved

 

What we still have to do

  • find supervisor
  • get our activity provider to send over their safety procedures

[LO4, LO5]

Initiating CAS planning was definitely a lot of work: I wanted to do physically challenging activities like trekking or kayaking, (since my parents wouldn’t have the energy to bring me on such trips, this might be my last chance) and many of my friends weren’t interested – (and another group I wanted to join was full) As a result of this, I found my group late in the PW planning process. I guess its a good thing though, as I now have an opportunity to get to know new people, and Maia is also in this group.

The initial research stage was carried out late at night, and it was very frustrating because it was hard to find an activity supplier that was willing to take students, and many destinations we wanted to go to were too expensive. (ie. Nepal / Japan) Its definitely not wise to spend more than half of our budget on the plane tickets. Despite this process, I stayed up at night to meet the deadline – I think this shows commitment and perseverance, you know how hard it is to battle an urge to sleep. I managed to find information on possible trips in Australia and an activity provider in Mongolia, and wrote up a backup proposal for Australia, even though our group decided to go to Taiwan (a location found by another group member) in the end. This could perhaps show how important it is for group members to put effort into a group – that night, we had me and two other people searching for possible trips, (or two that were active on the group chat) and it was only through three of us maniacally searching for trips, and each finding a few good ones, that we were able to find Taiwan (which has cheap flights) and our ideal trip.

[LO3]

Contacting the supplier was also a hassle – would this be how the grown up, business world works? Emails don’t get read until the next working day, and communications drag out – somehow, we were also have been more clear in our communications.  If I had to plan another CAS experience I would have sent the 11 questions after they reply to my first email. This teaches me the importance of simple communication, and not dumping information on the other party.

 

LO 3 Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience

LO 4 Show commitment to and perseverance in your CAS experiences

LO 5 Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

 

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February 15

Service Initial Visioning – (The service leadership meeting)

As a student who has been at UWC since grade three, and who has been immersed in this culture of ‘doing service’, I found the ideas discussed justnow interesting and relevant to my experiences at this school. As the co-chair of my GC, I have hoped that I could have extracted more specific tips on running/planning sessions, but I also feel comforted by the fact that other chairs and co-chairs are facing similar challenges to my own. I’m going to record them here so I can access them later.

My thoughts

  • I’m glad I’m not the only person finding it difficult to get people in my service to run efficiently

Key discussion points:

  •  Adding a selection process for joining services to prevent unmotivated group members
    • Some people argued that such a process is necessary, as unmotivated members drag the team back.
      • key issue: applicants may be tempted to present a fake interest; (which is all too common in this school where moral expectations are so high.)
      • preventative measures: face to face interviews with student leaders/ teachers, trial period before students are accepted, discussions (someone mentioned a brilliant point, on how the way applicants question the way things are done in a GC / propose their own ideas, could be a good indicator of interest in a GC, as compared to memorising facts about the NGO or superficially listing their own strengths)
      • I personally don’t agree with this approach. Throughout my years at this school, I have committed my fair share of ‘service-related-crimes’; In middle school, I joined a GC out of curiosity, where I ended up eating a sandwich and counting coins without really caring for the cause. The teacher (thankyou Mr.Nightingale) really did try to push me to care, and in hindsight, I really wasn’t living up to the passionate student service wants me to be. Through that experience, and frustration from being nagged at, I understood that I should either join a GC I care about, or not at all. As someone that follows through with commitments, I did what I was asked to do in that GC, but I lacked the spark to do better, or to understand why I am spending every Tuesday lunchtime there – which is that I ultimately lacked the attitude I should be feeling, when doing service. I think this is still an issue with other students, at UWC or elsewhere. Thanks to the open environment and ease of getting into GC, I was able to learn through this mistake. (I wasn’t entirely useless to my old GC, I did take a while to eat, and I did get annoyed when rushed, but I did put effort into the work I did after eating…) Last year, I wasn’t the perfect GC member either. I remember that me and another now-student-leader played splix.io in the back row. Now, both of us are hard workers, as seen through how I was willing to sit through this meeting that I’m reflecting on right now, and also go to school early to present our milk tea proposal. (aside 1) I am also worrying about the GC and trying to get stuff done – My friend who played splix with me now willing takes on tasks. Earlier in the year, when we couldn’t finish the milk tea business proposal in session, she also offered to help me with work with her own time.
      • Another discussion point of meeting: Assigning responsibilities to group members increase motivation
        • Giving people titles may not be useful, as they push work around (oh emailing is the communications officer’s job!) – this hasn’t happened in SoC, perhaps because we are kind of just ignoring all job titles, and doling work to anyone willing to do it.
        • Tony (SoC Chair) brought it up that during our meetings, when he asks people to gather around, GC members sit as far away from him as possible. Ignoring the humour of the situation, he reminds us that GCs need a sense of camaraderie between leaders and students. I would need to work on this myself as well; sometimes when I try to check on the 9th-graders progress on a task, they stare at me like I’m a ghost. How can we achieve this though? I’ve seen the banter between the chair and the 9th-graders but when it comes to decision making, people just distance themselves. Is it laziness? boredom? Do our members want to be here? I hope so. This Sunday they will be test making the milk tea – I won’t be there, but this could be a great bonding activity for them, although perhaps not, as half of the people still aren’t going. At least they could have fun while doing GC stuff. GC should be fun.
      • I hope our school wouldn’t implement a complicated service application process – we have enough paperwork and competition with EE proposals/ project week proposals. I like the freedom and ease of being able to sign up for anything I want, although that comes with the responsibility of committing, and not taking such opportunities for granted.
      • Others thought that motivation, and ‘passion’ could be developed, and realised, through good leadership. I agree more with the latter group, and perhaps it is also our failure to lead, to provide purposeful work, to provide a sense of meaning, that causes team members to become unmotivated. I like the idea of unrecognised potential.
    • Sense of community/ service culture
      • Yearbook of achievement where each GC has a page <- love this idea – rewarding service with esteem. This links to DT, where doing service can now bring social pleasure. How does our school have such bright, forward thinking individuals?
      • Having more service-leader meetings. I have mixed feelings on this one; meetings would be a great use of time if I could extract valuable ideas, but otherwise, I could be better off relaxing at home. Something I realised in IFP last week was that a good team could make my life so pleasant, and a bad one make even a fun process torturous. I could only hope the people that surround me are insightful and great. When I’m older, I want to be such a valuable person, and surround myself with similar people.
    • Lack of communication between GCs and NGOs
      • We are supposed to be helping the NGOs, but I had never spoken to people from the NGO at any point in my 2.25 years in this GC – I really wish I could. First, this could help us in making marketing materials for the milk tea – it is a requirement we mention the NGO and the UN SDGs it works on. For every GC, it is always about raising funds and awareness, the old cliches. Sometimes I find it hard to explain to others why my GC is so important, why they should put effort into it. Sometimes I even find it hard to explain to myself why I need to help New Hope Foundation – how will I motivate others to work hard if I can’t even fully convince myself? In the beginning of the year, Tony was talking about something to do with skype-ing the NGO monthly – perhaps we should arrange a talk with the NGO? At latest, I think we should contact them next year, when handing over our leadership roles, so the new leaders have a better sense of direction, which I would really would have liked to have more of.

 

Back to reflecting on my GC, here are some things I should consider:

  • Sense of camaraderie
  • Motivating others – NGO contact?
  • (from this morning) Next meeting with Mr Hannah: link required documents to calendar invite
  • How do I communicate better with the chair? I’m happy that we are both invested, and our skillsets seem to compliment each other – but its often difficult for two people to follow a task the other is in charge of organising. Do we need better minutes? Should I suggest we write up GC meeting plans before sessions? I should try to discuss more.

 

LO 1 Identifying own strengths and develop areas for personal growth

LO 5 Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

LO 6 Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance

a1 Mr. Hannah was present for both our meeting this morning, and the service meeting, so I must admire his commitment to organising service-related things at our school. I personally find it incredibly hard to sacrifice sleep, and I wouldn’t be able to stand working out of hours. I used to find all the regulations on milk tea ingredients / product sourcing very irritating. (and Mr. Hannah happened to be the person to share this information with us, and there was a period of time when I wasn’t very pleased with this…) Service leadership meetings are quite nice in creating a sense of community.

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November 13

Inkling Banner Collab

These are the two header images submitted to Inkling – In the end, the editors chose the blue color scheme.

These images are a collab project between @Maia and me, where she did the lineart and I colored in. I found it interesting how our art styles blended in this work. My own lines are usually much sketchier, while Maia’s are neat, as it is in these works; the coloring is done by me, with photoshop patterns and fun brushes. I would never have thought of creating anything including dinosaurs, while Maia is an enthusiast that has been drawing them since… when I first known her in grade 3.

For this collab, we worked separately, where Maia first did the line art, scanned it, and handed it over to me for coloring, with both of us making our own stylistic choices. I love how this work turned out and I don’t think the style is a problem, but I wonder if this would have went less smoothly if we weren’t so close to each other, and didn’t work together so seamlessly. Would I be irritated to work on art that doesn’t suit my styles? Would the other be upset at how the works turned out after editing? With matters as personal as artwork, distain for a collaboration partner could cause people to lose interest in trying to improve on the piece. (For me, I made the yellow-themed on first, and changed it to the blue to see if it would work better) I’m glad that both Maia and I are open-minded to each other’s choices, and I think my admiration for Maia’s artistic skill also made the collaboration much more smooth. Perhaps this could also apply to other group work, where respect – not the shallow tolerant kind, but the kind that appreciates the other’s character – and open-mindedness boosts the work produce.

Because I’ve known Maia for so long, I also trust her to pull her part of the project and trust that whatever she makes will be nice – with a stranger, I might have set explicit deadlines to ensure they allow me enough time to color it, or created planned out content guidelines together to ensure the work we put effort in will turn out acceptable. If Maia and I had these limitations, we would have created a much more conventional work – I might have suggested her to draw flowers, and she might have suggested I do a realistic coloring – the outcome would be much less creative, and I think this splash of Maia and my ideas is much more suitable for Inkling’s image, as a cultured literary magazine. Perhaps freedom allows people to produce better results in group work? But then how much freedom is good amount of freedom? Perhaps it depends on the person.

LO 5 Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

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October 22

General Update On My CAS Progress

LO 1 Identifying own strengths and develop areas for personal growth

LO 2 Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process

LO 5 Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

Before the break, I attended my first meeting as the co-chair of my GC, where I was thrust my load of challenges. It wasn’t as easy as carrying out the plan I carefully formulated the days before. The chair arrived late due to miscommunication with the service department, as a result, I had to step out of my comfort zone, walk to the front of the room, and run the GC meeting in place of the chair. (See meeting agenda here, under 25/9/18) Although the GC members were originally sticky when it came to rearranging themselves into their assigned groups, (event planning, blog, and trip planning) the groups did end up with decent discussions. I found that visiting each group and asking them questions, as I had watched the old chair do, (what do you think we could do to raise awareness? How many blog posts should we aim to create per month?) was effective at getting their brainstorming started. I think my prompting skills have improved over the session, which would be useful for continuing to motivate GC members in the future. However, a challenge I faced with this method was that some groups got off track while I attended to others. I’ll need to find a solution to this – perhaps I could delegate some of the ‘chatting up’ to other leaders?

It’s really important to keep members occupied, otherwise, they lose momentum and drift off track.

Another challenge I faced was the ambiguity of being co-chair; I had to decide what our GC members do during the meeting, and although we did have a list of things we are required to complete, assigned to us by the service office, we had to manage time and people so that tasks are given appropriate time and people to carry out.Last meeting, we didn’t manage to complete the finance request form – One of the reasons I procrastinated on this was that I had not idea what to write on it, (how much does out GC need?) who to address it to, (Who is out NGO contact?) and the procedures involved. In hindsight, I should have asked one of the ex-leaders. (slightly problematic because the old head of finance left – guess I’ll have to be more thick skinned when it comes to seeking support from the old chair and co-chair) However, I also realised that I shouldn’t try to do every task, as I still have to make sure the blog team completes a post – Currently, I intend for the head of finance to find out how this form works, (whether from the old leaders, or a trip to the service office) and get an update from her once it’s done. I wonder what she’ll think of the extra work. Then again, I cannot possibly do everything. (conveniently, the chair will be absent again, as theres a service conference) Tomorrow, I’ll make sure the form gets done.

All in all, co-chair is a challenging position, which I would probably be more comfortable in after a more sessions. Even after just one session, I am already practicing and feeling more comfortable with communicating with the other leaders, and keeping organised. Half an hour ago, I re-formatted the meeting plan from last week, into a minutes document resembling those of the old leadership group, placed it in the GC folder, and added in tomorrow’s meeting plan. Later, I also plan to email the other leaders about this document, with the aim of getting them more involved in the planning and execution of meetings. Sure, I’m co-chair, but I’m a person and I’m bound to overlook important tasks occasionally, extra eyes and ideas from another mind won’t hurt.

I think I’ll learn loads from being co-chair, and I look forward to building upon my skills so I can lead my GC more effectively such that it can raise awareness and help New Hope Foundation.

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