Something I found difficult in the training sessions was that it was hard to stay energetic and focused in training as some days I was tired from school and wanted to rest. Collaborating with my friends in badminton helped me a lot in this as talking with them helped me stay positive and distract me from homework and stress. (LO2, challenges) (LO4, commitment) (LO5, collaboration)

One of the ways I used my management skills in badminton was planning the warmups. I found that in the beginning of when I first joined badminton, I struggled to keep with the coach’s warmup and decided with my friend to do a few warmups together so that I could handle the groups practice better. We stretched our body first and then did some simple badminton exercises to warm up our body. (LO3, planning)

I have been playing badminton since I was small but only recently joined the badminton team this year. Something I realised during training is that I am slow on my feet and lack feet body coordination. This is because when I was small I trained more in swimming and thus my coordination and reaction time is slower on land. In pre-season training I found the footwork challenging and practiced with my friend a lot so I could improve. This helped me a lot since I was more comfortable with the steps and improved more in comparison to the first session. (LO1, strengths and weaknesses), (LO2, challenges)

In 3 of our sessions, we were able to get a person come in and raise awareness about therapeutic art and how it positively impacts our health and well-being. We did several sessions like painting rocks, drawing and spray-painting and learned about different styles of therapeutic art.

I think this was really interesting to learn about since recently there has been an increase of mental disorders and the knowledge we learnt about therapeutic art can be applicable towards this issue. Particularly, since the rise of mental disorders i.e. depression, anxiety, insomnia is more frequent in younger generations and is on the pathway to becoming more accepted. (LO6, global issue)

During each session, whilst eating lunch we planned what we would be doing for the current week and tried to make every session diverse and different. For example, one week we would have to draw an idea related to a specific theme, the next week we would do rock-painting or learn about therapeutic art. We also brushed up our knowledge on several art techniques and styles like spray-painting, charcoal and watercolour painting. (LO3, planning)

In season 1 and season 2 I was able to join pottery club, and so I already had a familiar experience with being a member of an art club.  I think my strengths are that I collaborate well in art sessions as it pushes my creativity more, and enjoy taking an interest in creative stuff, therefore I found art society engaging and the atmosphere encouraging. Some of my weaknesses I would identify is that I procrastinate a lot, so it takes me some time to start drawing or creating something. (LO1, strengths and weaknesses)

Some people I collaborated with in art society are my friends and the younger students. Since it is a club created by students and not a teacher, the overall mood of the sessions are fun and comfortable. I was able to apply my collaboration skills in situations where I was not as confident in my art abilities and required help from other students. (LO5, collaboration)

Even though in the beginning of the service we were not allowed to meet up with our service partner, we were able to find other ways to ensure that we providing them with materials they needed as well as make videos of us reading children books so that they were still learning english with us. It was hard to stay focused and committed as the service struggled to come up with new ideas and also because we couldn’t get proper feedback from the service partners.

However, around the middle of the year we were granted permission to meet up with the kids and I think this helped us as we could see more clearly the areas we need to improve, i.e. whether we were keeping the kids engaged or the best methods of teaching them english. (LO4, commitment)

Interacting with our service partner one of the main themes in our sessions was educating the kids about life on land and life under water as well as climate change. We prepared a various number of activities for them incorporating the nature of animals and affects of climate change on life under water. (LO7, global issue)

Something we were careful of is when the kids were fasting due to their culture. In this period the service organised less active sessions as well as avoiding any pictures to do with pigs. We tried to organise and plan the sessions more carefully in order to respect their culture and make them as comfortable as possible. (LO6, ethical decision)