Sustainabrew CAS Project (Investigation, Preparation)

LO3-Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience.

Investigation and Preparation

As we have spent a half year getting to know the service, getting used to how it works and the routines for brewing various drinks by following our supervisors, we came across the opportunity to finally try things out by ourselves. With new grade 9-10’s coming into the service, there was a perfect opportunity for us grade 11’s to teach the newcomers and get them integrated into our service. As a result, our goal was to be able to lead and help these newcomers become accustomed to the service but also develop our leadership and brewing skills through organizing our own recipes for us and the grade 9-10’s to try. We spent a couple of lessons planning what we might do every session, thinking about what would be best chronological to get the grade 9-10’s more comfortable with brewing and also what might be fun making. The general outline of our plan revolved around our earlier sessions to be easy and well-known drinks that everyone likes, such as like ice-lemon tea. We would then go on to develop into more interesting and complex drinks, such as carbonated drinks which require a new skill to create. Finally, we wanted the students to plan and make their own recipe, making it into a competition so it becomes competitive and so that we could extract the best recipe out of it. We made sure to split the roles evenly amongst us grade 11’s. We would generally have two mainly supervising each session and alternate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Student Voice Final Reflection

LO1-Identify their own strengths and develop areas for growth.

LO6-Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance.

As we get closer to the end of the year, nearing graduation for us grade 12’s, I can definitely say I have experienced something different and meaningful throughout my one and half years in student voice. My participation in Student Voice as an activity was something that was rather unintentional but I definitely do not regret taking this and I hope to continue to participate in a similar activity like this one in my university life. Although I wasn’t in any major leadership role in the activity, I feel like by just participating and contributing some ideas throughout the meetings/sessions in this activity, I was able to learn a lot about what it takes behind the scenes to plan and execute events. As someone who hasn’t experienced participating in an activity that proactively plans for school events, it was a new experience to feel more integrated and be a core part of our community by listening to the voices of the students and enacting changes to better our school.

In addition, I feel like the activity also allowed me to push myself a bit outside my conform zone. I generally find myself to be good at communicating ideas with others and hence, I feel like that’s how I have been contributing to this activity. However, I am not really used to taking upon some form of leadership and responsibility in my activities and services. Yet, in student voice, as someone who represents my mentor, I was required to relay the information over to my mentor peers and even sometimes prepare some activities. That being said, it was quite a fun experience, knowing some of the things happening in school before others but also carrying that responsibility to inform others.

Lastly, I think one big take away I had in this activity was the overall influence we as students can have if we voice ourselves and collaborate together. Although some of the things we do in the activity might be “quality of life” changes to our school, we did end up planning and deploying significant changes to our school: the most memorable one being adapting/reforming the PSE sessions content. I definitely felt a different level of impact during this phase as we were dealing with issues that are globally significant as we planned how to make the topic of “sexual harassment” and “rape” more available and informative so that students become more aware and take the issue with more significance. I have already mentioned this but the giving tree event was also another major event we helped organize, helping those organizations that were impacted significantly by COVID-19 and communities that are less fortunate than us in singapore.

 

 

 

 

Sustainabrew CAS Project( Action, Reflection, Demonstration)

LO2- Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process

LO7-Recognise and consider the ethics implications of choices and actions.

Action, Reflection and Demonstration: 

With the schedule done, we ended up implementing our session plan, which was about 8+ weeks long. We followed our plan, and allowed for turns in supervision for each session. Oftentimes, we would just join in and help the grade 9-10’s use some of the equipment, namely this particular chemical which I completely forgot what it was called that was used for washing any of the utensils used. At first, the things we did were all going according to the plan but we did run across some mistakes along the way. One of the biggest failures we came across as leaders of the session was forgetting to submit properly the ingredients form the previous week or because of some miscommunication, ingredients don’t arrive even when ordered. This, unfortunately, occurred about two or more times which made us walk into a session without any of the ingredients. This forced us to adapt to either create a drink with the ingredients we already have – which were often just simple drinks – or allocate time for all of us to research new recipes. We always had something to do in this service so that was definitely a nice thing. However, one of the biggest regrets was not being able to participate in any big event in our school to share some of the awesome recipes we have found and created in our time in the service. This is obviously due to COVID-19 restrictions but we were definitely the unlucky batch of students as our seniors did get the chance to do so. That being said, looking back, I think we adapted well to the restriction as we set more focus on developing and researching new recipes so that our future members of the service can use them in future events when restrictions die down.

 

Reflection

What went well:

  • Decent close analysis was able to convey the things I have planned to within the time 
  • Was able to link the works consistently with the issues

How prepared you felt:

  • I didn’t write an essay to remember off, I had prepared the structure and detailed ideas of what I am going to say in each section. I also feel like I have understood the works enough for me to be comfortable and flexible with the way I speak. I would say I generally felt prepared, but since I don’t really know word for word of what I am going to say, there was a bit of anxiety. 

How you responded to the questions:

  • The questions were definitely the most nerve-racking part as I don’t really have a clue of what is going to be asked. Particularly, in my case, my partner asked me about how the context of the literary work may change the way the works are interpreted. I think I was able to answer this question pretty well as I understood enough of the context to build my own interpretation. However, when he asked about how the issue may be prevalent to modern days, ideas were less intuitive as I dont really know too much about the political world, some basic understanding but nothing insightful. 

What improvements you need to make over the next 10-14 days

  • I definitely need to rehearse my notes so I can have a bit more confidence in myself in terms of presenting my ideas. I think I also need to bring in more technical terms and analyze micro details succinctly. 
  • I also want to prepare more for the questions and so I would ideally spend my time learning more about the BoW and the context. Also, within our modern society, perhaps look at some examples and have an understanding of its relation to the issue of state violence. 

What mark you would give it and why:

  • I would give myself around 28 because although I felt like I did present my ideas properly, upon listening back to it, I think I need a better structure. I need to make the ideas flow and build upon each other as it felt as though I was going back and forth at times with some of the ideas. Also, I think I have missed out on some of the simpler ideas in terms of the close analysis, like for Nash’s art, I completely forgot about the color schemes he uses in his BoW.

DJ Club Final

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

With more experience in utilizing the basic mechanics of the mixer, we spent the majority of the sessions just trying out different combinations of songs, even bringing in our own selected songs rather than the default ones given in the app. This was by far the hardest skill, and a skill that just seemed to be based off from instinct. It wasn’t really something quantitative, a skill that we can work towards with steps, the ability and sense required to transition form 1 song to another smoothly felt like it just required “that feeling” in the moment of mixing, a feeling that was hard to describe. However, one thing we found useful along the way was helping each other listen to what exactly we were mixing. This sounds kind of contradicting if you think about how the DJ should be able to hear his own mix, but something I found, and a lot of us “noobs” found, was that it was hard to hear exactly how well the song transitioned over. This probably had to do with how our headphones and the loud speakers were playing different songs ( this is required in order to mix ) and as a result, sometimes deafens our ability to hear the two songs properly mix when transitioned. So in order to overcome this, we would simply just help point out to each if the songs in the first place match well together or in general try and help give the timing for the mixes. We would also make sure to attempt the mix alternately amongst each other so that we can properly hear the mix when you are not the one “DJ-ing”.

Grade 12 Giving Tree Event Planning Reflection

LO7: Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions

An interesting statement came up during one of our student voice(SV) sessions and it made me think about some of the ethical implications surrounding such an idea. Our SV group has just started to plan out an event we have held every year: an event where we get our students from each cohort to donate goods that can be of help to our local and college service groups. As SV members as well as being the very audience of the event itself, our discussions revolved around how we could achieve to gain as many participants in this event this year. This was when we started discussing about holding a competition or a reward-based system to help motivate and bring active participation into the event.  Perhaps there may be nothing wrong with such a suggestion but there is definitely a conflict between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. However, the reality is that these ideas are without a doubt going to increase participation in our event and hence I believe there is an ethical conflict. We could definitely also just implement punish-based competition if we wanted to drastically increase participation as students are more likely to view a loss greater than an equivalent gain – the loss aversion effect. In a nutshell, I believe the question lies with whether the ends justify the means. Personally, I believe the context heavily matters and different people will have different opinions of the matter. If our goal was to simply just raise products for our services, then I don’t think it really matters whether we use intrinsic or extrinsic motivation as a way to involve students. However, if the event’s aim were to place importance on the intent behind donating the goods, then, of course, intrinsic motivation is very necessary for this process, rather fundamental.

 

 

Volleyball Reflection

Upon looking back, I have realized I really needed to work more on my lower body strength. This is particularly so that I can achieve a higher contact point when doing a smash next to the net. Since I am not that tall, this will allow more room for flexibility when aiming as I am mid-air. As of now, I am pretty much only barely hitting it down onto the court, and the majority of my shots end up going off the court as I keep hitting it too high up rather than hitting the ball down. Hence, moving forward, I think I need to work on my leg strength, particulary my quads and calf if I want to achieve a higher jump. This also brings me into thinking I need more hip strength as that will not only assist me in jumping higher but also achieve more stability with overall movement around the court as I do find myself sometimes off balance and having to lean on my stronger right leg.

Gordon Park’s Essay Practice

Gordon Parks is a well-known influential African American artist back in the 20th century, being multi-talented in many different professions including a film director, musician, writer, and most notably, a photographer. He is best known for shedding light in the difficulties and pride of the African American experience through the glamors of photography. Park wanted to address through his work, the inherent disadvantage African American’s were placed in and ultimately make about change in the social injustice and racial prejudice African American’s faced in their lives. “Ondria Tanner and Her Grandmother Window-shopping” is one of Park’s works for life magazine that was never exhibited during the times of racial segregation. This piece of work illustrates the racial and class segregation in American society and subtly depicts the harsh realities of young African Americans who are internalizing the effects of systematic racism.

Through this artwork, Park uses the concept of “Real vs Apparent” and even classism to highlight the severe injustice experienced by African Americans. Firstly, one of the most noticeable elements of the image is the myriad of purely white mannequins. By having the mannequins – which are objects used to aesthetically display consumer goods – as only of white color, it depicts the dominant force of white culture and the preferred race in society. Hence, the superficial nature of the mannequins is ironically representative of the reality of society and reflects the natural racial prejudice against African Americans. Furthermore, the glass wall that separates the mannequins and the young African American girl represents both the figurative and literal barriers between races: the inability to become white and the racial segregation that prevents equality amongst races. This coupled with the relatively high-angle shot and the elevated foregrounded white mannequin, illustrates a power-dynamic, not only created by racial differences but also through socio-economical classes. The way in which the centered white child mannequin is towering above the African American girl also quite literally suggests the uneven grounds and the inherent disadvantage African Americans are placed in as soon as they are born. The composition of the photo is also rather interesting, with the light shining down in front of the centered mannequin, whilst the dark shadow on her back is seemingly aligned with the African American girl and her grandmother. This may bring metaphorical implications of how white Americans are shined with success in society, whilst black African Americans suffer in the background, hidden in the shadows. 

Despite this, the African American girl seems interested, or perhaps even inspired, or rather desires the white mannequins with her hands reaching out to touch them. However, the glass wall prevents her from doing so, yet interestingly, her grandmother also extends her arm in a rather protective manner to prevent the girl from touching them. Ideally, the grandmother achieves to protect her granddaughter from physical oppression and racism, however, falls short in protecting her from the mindset of normalized white supremacy and the internalization of systematic racism. Through this image, Park achieves to illustrate the harsh and unfair predicaments of African Americans and the intersectional elements of marginalization that cruelly reinforces segregation.

More experiences in DJ Club

LO1 Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth

My DJ club experience so far has been more than enjoyable. It is honestly upsetting that it is only available once a week. For the past few weeks, during the sessions, I have practiced the basic skills of transitioning using the main slider. I have also gotten used to matching and syncing different tracks together; this was something I wasn’t familiar with or lacked in experience beforehand. I have also tried getting my own music and attempt jamming them together. It felt quite “good” to mix songs and make satisfying transitions with songs you know. I have recently learned about the loop mechanic which is something I think I might want to start practicing. Being able to pick a specific part of a song and loop it has always in my head being a “DJ” kind of thing. When you think about DJ, one of the first things that come to mind is the idea of the build-up that is looped that gets faster and faster until it leads to the base drop. I definitely think I want to explore this new skill that I have learned. I also think I might want to play around manipulating the volumes of each track separately as I feel like I am already quite good at using the main slider; this slider adjusts the volume of both songs simultaneously. I always thought the deck itself had too many buttons and quite overwhelming, however, by taking it step by step, I actually found it quite simple and I liked the development/progress I make with each new button function I learn. It feels like almost a game, where different buttons have different difficulty levels and you slowly pick one by one to practice and master.

Lesson Planning In Sustainabrew!

LO 3. Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience

After spending seasons 1 and 2, with enough experience, our grade 11’s were given a chance to plan out 4-5 weeks’ worth of lessons. Although we were kind of like seniors in our service as grade 11’s, we were all quite inexperienced with how Sustainabrew worked as a service and as well as not being familiar with the concept of brewing sustainable drinks. We have helped our service as assistants through seasons 1 and 2 but this time, it was rather our first time given “official” responsibility in the service.

Knowing as new students were joining this season, it was important to consider how we felt as students first entering this service. Our plan started off by creating something simple yet tasty and so we planned the first couple of sessions with simple drinks like lemonade and lemon tea. As we let our new members get used to the environment and our small sustainable community, we started looking at things that we created in the past that were successful. We eventually even made the infamous Kombucha, a drink that our previous experiences didn’t light great positive experiences with; the scoby was something we all found disgusting. However, the teachers seemed to like it and thus was marked as a success. As we created more and more drinks, familiar with more recipes, we dedicated some of our days to understanding sustainability and how we can create sustainable drinks. We had people make presentations and present recipes that might be of future use.

It was great to see how the plans that we made came out to be quite organized and smooth. However, I think we grade 11’s realized, sometimes it is quite hard to make each and every lesson interesting and unique. As a strategy to overcome this, whenever we ran out of ideas, we liked to take previous recipes and create a twist in them. That way, we were able to branch out to not only new recipes but create a personalized more unique drink. I think this also helped the members in sustainabrew to become more creative and explorative in our ideas.

Here is the picture of the scoby. Not so pleasant for most of us…