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
#lo3
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.
Piano reflection 2
Piano this season has really helped demonstrate my commitment and perseverance because with all my other academic and activity commitments, I have made time during lunches and after school to practice during school and after school. I have since had to have given up time with my friends to go and eat lunch but instead, I went down to the music rooms to practice my songs. I feel like doing this had made me a more organized person as it has allowed me to realize just how much time I can make available for my studies and activities if I am really focused on them. This has also made me realize my ability to commit to something as now I can dedicate a lot of time to something I enjoy, which in turn, can make more a better student as I can dedicate more time to studying. This has also proved to be a development of learning outcome 3 because finding the balance between academics, swimming and piano were difficult. Having to plan for each piano session and time for practices by myself was difficult but after a few weeks of experimenting, I was able to come up with a schedule that allowed me to practice piano, maintain my academic and swimming commitments.
Service reflection 2
This image is showing my confidence levels over time since the start of the service, it has helped to show my perseverance in being able to continue doing the service and help build up my confidence in working with people who have intellectual disabilities. Also working with other people during the activity has helped improve my confidence as it allowed me to express myself better.
After visiting the Minds care centre for the first time, I had a bit of a drop in confidence as the next time we were going to see our service partners, it was going to be the first time we were going to have a session that we planned ourselves. This brings me to learning outcome 3, where we had to initiate and plan a CAS experience. Planning the first session was nerve-wracking as it the first time I had to plan something for people with intellectual disabilities as I didn’t know what activities they would enjoy and engage with and what they wouldn’t. After the first session, my confidence had a bit of a fall as some of the activities that we had planned to do didn’t work out to great, seeing as the clients didn’t engage too well with them, therefore, we were forced to reflect on the session and see what sort of activities they would enjoy. It turned out simple games or activities worked best as they were the ones our clients enjoyed most so after the second session, my confidence had started to rise again because the new activities that we planned were a lot more engaging and the clients were interacting a lot more with the activities.