https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRvX6k_AQ_U&feature=youtu.be
Here is my final reflection after participating in project week. I try to reflect on my experience during project week and how it has shaped me as a person.
Month: March 2020
Project week reflection 1
Currently, I am writing a reflection during the early stages for planning our cas experience, ie project week. We have currently been doing research on what activities, service and creativity experiences that we can undertake in order for us to have a memorable and meaningful experience. For service, we have been looking into the Yayasan organisation which provides underprivileged kids with food and education every day. This raised the idea of learning outcome 6, where we have learned about a global issue, poverty, and tried to take local action in Indonesia to help improve the lives of these local Indonesian kids. However, during the planning of this trip, we also encountered a major issue, it being that there were riots ongoing in Jakarta at the time, so the planning for the activity (learning muay Thai) that we wanted to do could no longer be used as both our supervisor and group deemed that participating in the activity would no longer be safe. In order to make adjustments to our plan, our group had to be flexible in what they were willing to do, therefore, we managed to compromise and instead of doing an activity (learning muay Thai) which was at the epicenter of the riots, we decided to go with a creative experience that would still allow us to learn more about the culture, which was learning how to cook the local cuisine and going on tour to famous monuments and museums. This shows learning outcome 3 because even though we encountered major issues in the planning stages, we were all still able to act quickly and compromise on a new activity that our supervisor deemed safe and make adjustments to our itinerary. Moreover, this also shows learning outcome 5 as we had to collaborate to not only compromise on certain activities, we were all delegated roles during the planning stage and during the trip. Even though we had separate roles, we had to work interconnectedly with each other to ensure that we could come up with an itinerary that was efficient, but not too cramped. Overall, I am currently enjoying the early stages of the project week planning and can’t wait for the next weeks to come
Swimming at the end of grade 11
This year of swimming has been especially challenging for me. Though I may have been focused more on the physical aspects of swimming throughout the year, I wasn’t too focused on my mental aspect towards it. Throughout this year especially, I hadn’t been enjoying the sport as much as before and I felt that it was difficult to go swimming. Not only has my love for the sport been dying out, it was also difficult to maintain a consistent commitment to the sport because of academic stress and pressure. Being at the end of grade 11, where academic pressures are high, I had to ensure that I got the grades I wanted to apply to the schools I wanted to go to. This was an example of the challenges that I had faced throughout grade 11. However, throughout these hardships, I was able to persevere and get through the year not only maintaining my swimming commitment and academics but also with my happiness. This helped me develop by understanding myself and how to balance my happiness with my commitments. I feel that this has shown growth as I had to make adjustments to my schedules for my sake which meant that I cut down on swimming and spent more time relaxing and destressing, because what was once a stress-reducing activity (swimming) had actually started inducing stress as a result of the expectations and performance requirements in swimming. In general, I was quite pleased with my performance at the end of grade 11 and being crowned SEASAC champions as a team again was also quite gratifying as the hard work that had been put in had paid off.
Chinese chat reflection 2
Finishing up Chinese chat in grade 11 has really left some impactful experiences on me. Being able to watch my mentees progress throughout the year in the Chinese abilities with the aid of my teaching and their school learnings has made me feel a sense of accomplishment. It was gratifying to know that my planning towards each lesson was effective yet enjoyable for the students, this ability has also translated into other areas of my life where it was important for me to have a good plan for self-management. This shows learning outcome 3 where I had created a plan for my CAS experience, being Chinese chat, each lesson, I had to carefully plan how I was going to approach the lesson and what subjects and areas I had to cover in order to ensure the learning of the students. Moreover, with each subsequent lesson, I was able to show growth as I had become more accustomed to the teaching role as compared to being a student. Throughout the duration of the activity, I became more aware of what attitude I should be approaching the students with and how I could have the most enjoyable lesson without it getting too boring for the student, seeing as they are kids in middle school, planning out break times or rest times for the to just relax was something important that I found since they couldn’t concentrate for very long. Only after a few sessions of doing this was I able to get the right balance between rest and study which kept the student engaged during our study time but also relaxed enough so that he wasn’t stressed during this lesson. This shows growth because, in the beginning, I was very unsure about how to approach and teach the students, but as time went on and more sessions passed, I become more aware and learned more about the intricacies of teaching and was able to grow into a better mentor for the students.