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
#lo5
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.
Swimming in grade 12
This year has been a difficult time for me for swimming. The wrestle between academics and continuing swimming has been hard. Especially in grade 12, when all the internal assessments and extended essay we had to do, being able to organize time was vitally important if I wanted to continue swimming. Something that I did do was to cut down a bit on swimming other I felt that it would have been difficult to maintain a good study schedule. This compromise allowed me to maintain some form of swimming standard and also allowed me to focus on my academics when I needed to. This in a way shows my perseverance to the sport as I could have easily given it up, so actually deciding to continue swimming was a way for me to demonstrate this quality. I feel as if I was somewhat successful in achieving my goals for swimming, I wanted to make the SEASAC team in which I did, however, unfortunately, it was cancelled. More importantly, I made my goals for the times that I wanted to swim in competitions which I was rather proud of. I feel like this time period where I had to compromise has helped me grow as a person. This is because I managed to find a way to balance both swimming and academics where I wouldn’t have to sacrifice one thing. This quality can help me in the future when I am forced to make a hard decision. This year in grade 12 has been really special in terms of swimming, as it is my last year in high school for this sport, so leaving with some great memories has always been a good thing about continuing swimming.
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.
MINDS Tampines dance and fitness fun
This is my first CAS reflection on my service, MINDS Tampines dance and fitness fun. We had just visited our partners and I wanted to talk about my first experiences. When we went down to the centre, I was a bit nervous as I’m not too comfortable with people who have intellectual disabilities so I had to put on my nicest face and try and figure out what’s the best way to behave around them. I also find making a fool of myself to a bit hard, so for dancing with our clients, I am a bit nervous. Something that may make up for my weaknesses is my collaboration skills as I am comfortable with working with most people. At the centre, we went through some do’s and don’ts, this helped me considered the ethics of my actions because not only were the clients less privileged then we are, they also were different to us. At the centre, we weren’t allowed to take photos of our clients, this was because taking photos of them may give off the wrong image of the type of people they are.
One goal that I have is to be more confident and just not care what other people think, this will help me enjoy myself more during the service which will make my experience and my client’s experience even better.
After the first session, this brought some global awareness of issues with disabilities in the world. Seeing as Singapore, a highly developed country, it still didn’t have sufficient space for people with intellectual disabilities to be free or have access to facilities they require to help facilitate growth and development. This forced me to make responsible decisions about my way to not only interact with my service clients but also to interact with my current surrounding and be more grateful to what I have and what facilities I have access to