Tag: LO5

Following my truly incredible experience with Culturama 2019, Kahaani seemed like the perfect opportunity for me to expand my newly found passion in this area and learn even more about the performing arts. Kahaani is a student-led annual performance involving Indian dance and storytelling, and ultimately works to raise funds for Kolkatta GC through ticket sales. It proved to be a completely different dynamic to my traditional German dance in Culturama, in that there were more performers and new choreographies using very different sequences. At first, the large number of dancers in each group made the organization of practices and communication very difficult, there were misunderstandings and inconsistencies within our group and group leaders, and it felt like we weren’t going to be able to pull through in time for the performance night. However, as we closed in on final rehearsals and light plots, we realized that it would need the commitment of each and every one of us if the dance was going to be even close to bearable. Looking back, it was this pressure and time constraint that finally motivated us to practice more, communicate clearly, which ultimately led to a pretty successful performance that night. This experience led me to the Learning Objective:

LO5: Demonstrate the skills and recognise the benefits of working collaboratively

As a group performance, we all needed to learn what it meant to work collaboratively even if we had never met or talked to one another before. We needed to realize that all of us played an equally important role, and that we all needed to contribute in equal amounts. I feel that there needed to be more guidance from the dance leaders, but they also experienced a learning curve when it came to the sheer amount of students we had engaged in that one performance. Once we started to come together nearing our performance date, I found that working collaboratively is difficult when you have 30 voices in one room, but that it is also essential to making any group performance a success.

As we near the end of the 2019 academic year, Tabitha has also closed in on its final evaluation of our performance this year. Throughout the year, we have engaged with numerous school-related activities and art performances and tried our very best to raise funds for Project Week. Though ultimately we were unable to go to Tabitha in Cambodia for our Project Week, we have been able to create a head-start for the upcoming group next year, who will hopefully be able to raise the remaining funds and leave for their trip. I have learned a lot about Tabitha as an organization, as well as the Cambodian community in general; what hardships they face and what support they need. This year, our group engaged in a lot of bake sales over the course of the year to fund our project and support Tabitha. At times, we baked together at school, which allowed us to become more familiar with each other and have fun fundraising.

One thing that I feel we did well this year was attempting our best to fundraise and continue supporting Tabitha despite the fact that we ourselves would not be able to visit Cambodia this year. All of us engaged in baking and selling for many events including school plays and fairs, and maintained a relatively organised group throughout. At the end of this year, we managed to raise a total of $2853, which will contribute to the funds next year. Though we will not be able to experience Tabitha first-hand, we hope that our efforts this year will be founded through a very meaningful and significant trip for the upcoming group next year.

One Learning Objective that I focused on this year was LO 5: Demonstrating the skills and recognizing the benefits of working collaboratively. Primarily due to the cancellation of the Tabitha project week, I think a lot of our group members lost motivation to continue to put in their full effort into Tabitha and its fundraising. However, this also gave me an opportunity to see why engaging in a GC together as a group is so important because we began to motivate each other and brought ourselves to help and support at our full potential. When we saw each other helping out at events and baking goods to sell, we saw it as more of a group effort and contributed our individual responsibilities and commitments so as to be of help to our group. I see our teamwork and collaboration skills as a key part of why Tabitha was able to work this year despite some major setbacks, and hope that the skills we learned this year will reflect on the performance and attitude of the next year’s group.

 

Starting from the end of half term break, our group will be meeting the care center members for the first time on our UWC East campus. Since starting the service at the beginning of term 1, our group has been working hard to create an effective action plan that will guide us in the coming year (see attached google doc or click here)

We began by listing the fundamental reasons behind why this specific service is needed for the local community. This helped to motivate our group and create a collective goal to work towards. Before beginning the service, I had initially thought of this service as an opportunity to help engage those, who might not have the chance to do so independently, to a fun sport. However, after this initial activity, I realized that it wasn’t just about the physical aspect, but the connection between people. Not only are we trying to make them feel more welcome to our campus, but we are also trying to contribute to our local community and improve the general life quality of the center’s members. To be able to achieve this, we conducted a SMART analysis in-class to make sure we understood the direction of action. The most important goal we came up with through the activity was: to build trusting relationships and to increase awareness on the issues in Singapore. Both of these are closely related to our interactions with people, specifically in Singapore. I felt that a lot of what we are trying to achieve does not only apply to those in our society that need extra support but connecting with the members in a personal & genuine way, just like you would with anyone you meet.

These activities and findings are closely related to LO5: Collaboration. Not only did we have to work as an effective team to generate ideas, but we have also learned more about how to collaborate with the care center members. During this process, I found that the hardest part of planning our line of activities and lessons was our lack of initial information given about the people in the care center. Even after visiting the center and seeing some of the members, it was hard to predict what kind of people they would be and what they were each comfortable doing. As a result, all of us helped in doing some research by looking online at their homepage and other blogs/community resources. This helped us gain a better understanding of who they were and what help they required. Knowing a little about the history of the center itself also gave us some insight as to what the center does to help its members, and how we (as UWC students), can contribute to this process. I feel that collaboration was a crucial part of the introduction to our service, and most of our group members were very vocal with their ideas, and we were able to come up with more quality ideas as a result. After taking time to brainstorm collectively and create a better understanding of how to communicate and strengthen relationships with the members, we are ready to welcome them to our school this coming Tuesday.