Kahaani

Kahaani

 

This is my third and final reflection for Kahaani. Overall, I think that Kahaani was a great experience for me as it allowed me to not only develop my dance but also to raise awareness of issues to do with poverty within india. For the show itself, we had a total of 150 tickets sold, which was the maximum due to COVID restrictions, of which all the funds raised will be used to support development programs for those in poverty with mental and physical disabilities. This is an important event for me, being someone who works with PWD every week for the past 3 years, I know the struggles that they face within society and how it plays a significant role on them. Although this contribution by me done through Kahaani, regardless how small, will have at least somewhat of an impact on someone’s lives, and through media and promotion of this event as well would also raise awareness of the issue we are advocating to solve. 

 

Throughout the whole Kahaani journey, we all collaborated as a group to plan each rehearsal time and, as I’ve said before, I made sure to spend time at home to know the dances by heart. I believe that planning my time was essential, considering the amount of other extracurricular activities I was juggling at the time and my academics too, and so finding the right time to rehearse and fitting each rehearsal into my schedule allowed me to do quite well in the final performances. I would say, one difficulty for me were the formations for each dance and how we needed to know where we were going to be for each particular dance, but I found that being diligent and aware of my surroundings, this obstacle was easily overcome.

 

#LO3#LO6

Kahaani

Kahaani

 

This is my second reflection for Kahaani. Having not had much experience dancing before, being in a dance showcase did pose quite a few hurdles that I had to overcome, mainly coming from fluidity and the foreign nature of Indian inspired dance. Being someone who has done musical theater in which dancing is a component of it, I found that through the same process of dedication and perseverance in taking my time it is the best way for me to get the best results. After multiple rehearsals I found that I was quite strong in being able to recite the dance, however my weakness was in steps to do with turning as my footing was usually wrong. Having developed a greater understanding of different dances in another culture, I can see that when I’m faced with another opportunity to participate in a cultural dance, although it would pose a challenge, knowing to be open minded and willing to learn and rehearse.

 

#LO1#LO2

kahaani

Kahaani

 

This is my first reflection for Kahaani. Kahaani is a dance showcase done by kol kata GC to raise awareness and money towards their cause, through Kahaani which uses Indian culture and traditions in dance form. In this reflection I will be focusing on both learning objectives 5 & 6. I have never been really comfortable with dancing as I thought I was very uncoordinated and had flimsy movements as opposed to my peers. I found that when I asked for help from others and getting help breaking down each move I found it was much easier. Especially for the partner dance which required me to pair up, I found that when communicating, spending time on the dance and working together really helped to put it all together. I think when working in groups, especially for a dance showcase like kahaani, collaboration is extremely important. Also, when doing kahaani I learned about Kolkata’s GC’s mission and how the funds we raise will help to improve the livelihood of certain people in India. Having participated in Kahaani, I know of the issues we aim to address and am more aware of what our goal is.

 

#LO5#LO6

Initial EE reflection

Initial EE reflection

 

To begin, I knew I wanted to do a world studies EE related to a medicinal topic. I already had an idea that had to do with vaccinations and what implications they had on the economy, which was a very raw and relevant one due to the current pandemic. This research into virology helped me to finalize my topics of focus, Biology and Economics. Initially with the broad topic of virology and a plethora of different topics and examples to choose from, I was not sure as to what exactly I was going to do. However with more research I chose malaria as it was the one that caught my eye the most as it has lots of far reaching implications.

Fourth reflection for special olympics

With the news that our service would move from virtual to physical where we would hold badminton lessons and finally see the athletes in real life, this was a really positive step as we have been doing all our sessions virtually. However, with the athletes coming this means that our structure for the online sessions would not work anymore, thus a new plan was needed for the physical sessions while still considering social distancing methods. So for the next 2 weeks we focused on planning and structuring the sessions, although they were physical and not online, found that we could still use a similar structure to the group virtual sessions consisting of a warmup, a main set with badminton related exercises and a cooldown with a yoga twist to it. We also split ourselves into 4 groups of 2 so that each pair would be paired up with an athlete that they already knew from before. In the second week, Mr Seng Poh came to school so that we could map out the 4 different badminton courts and the spectators seats to watch, this took quite a while since we were limited by space, and everyone was very patient and was always listening which is something that I have been working on as I used to be rather impatient.

Manageback: https://uwcseaeast.managebac.com/student/ib/activity/cas/19683334/reflections

#LO3#LO1

Third reflection for Special olympics

This is my third reflection for Special olympics. Being chair of my service in the times of covid brings challenges, every week I have to communicate with the Special Olympics organizer, Mr Seng Poh, to see if there will be any new people joining or leaving, whether there should be any changes and go through the timings and specifics of each online session. Also I have to communicate with Mr Hannah, our service supervisor, and all the service members to update any new information that came from Mr Seng Poh and to organize the zoom session. Recently, however, I was informed by Mr Seng Poh of a new fitness program that he would like us to follow, this included more one to one sessions with the athletes rather than as a group during the same time. This was a very new concept and a big change from what we had been doing with the group online sessions which we all had grown used to, so planning it out would take some time. I did this by having a lunchtime meeting with Mr Hannah and spent 1 session with the special olympic members to organize and plan how this would be done. I approached this with a positive attitude and accepted the change which I believe helped a lot in explaining what we would need to do. We did this by allocating each athlete 2 members of special olympics which they were already comfortable with so that there is a sense of familiarity to help transition smoothly to the individual workout sessions. One key component of this was to communicate with the group and collaborate with one another to help make it a very fun session and one key difference maker was the attitude and the environment which was very positive and optimistic. When designing the fitness plan we decided to let the athlete decide what he or she preferred among the list Mr Seng Poh provided, and once this was done the sessions started to run very smoothly and were fun and enjoyable too. For the future, I have learnt that an optimistic and positive attitude towards change is very important despite what initial thoughts I may have and that I should do the best I can to make it work which helped me and was a key to the success of the individual fitness program, especially so since I am chair I need to have patience and good communication skills in order to successfully collaborate with my peers.

Manageback: https://uwcseaeast.managebac.com/student/ib/activity/cas/19683334/reflections

#LO2#LO5

Second reflection for Fitness and Zumba with the Special Olympics Service.

This is my second reflection for Fitness and Zumba with the Special Olympics Service. Recently we held our first few virtual sessions with the athletes from special olympics. It was nice to see the faces of the athletes again. For these few sessions, special olympics coaches held it to introduce and familiarize virtual sessions to not only us but the athletes as well. For these sessions, they were structured and well planned out which is something that I kept in mind and used to plan our future sessions when we take over from the coaches. The session consisted of a 10 minute warmup, 20 minute badminton related exercises, 20 minute fitness exercises and 10 minute yoga cooldown. The reason for badminton related exercises is because one of the service’s aims is to improve the badminton ability of the athletes. Also, I was also appointed chair of the service and using this opportunity, I will develop my planning and communication skills as these are extremely important in order to be a good and impactful chair of the service.

Manageback link: https://uwcseaeast.managebac.com/student/ib/activity/cas/19683334/reflections

#LO4 #LO1

final music showcase reflection

As we are entering show week and the final rehearsal weekend the show started to really come together and the focus was to make sure it runs smoothly and is engaging, and in order for this to happen we needed to have patience and communicate with one another so that everyone knew their cues and where they were meant to be. Being the first musical showcase I have done, I have only done musicals, the concept was minimalism and to re-use material we had backstage so that we could recycle everything rather than buy new props, this required some adjusting of the materials and lots of collaboration in order to keep everything neat and tidy so that nothing gets lost or broken since we aimed to recycle all the material of past musicals. In the penultimate rehearsal, in my song there was a small dance break added in which I had the task of co-choreographing it with the two other leads who also needed to do the dance with me, although dancing is not my forte I still added some moves that I had learnt from my previous experiences and was open to criticism on my dance so that I could improve which helped me on stage. Due to the last minute nature of this dance we needed to rehearse during lunchtimes as well which were swift and easy as we all listened to one another. During the live performances, my song and dance went really well and all the four “mini” shows went very well, thanks to the hours of rehearsals and commitment of all the cast members.

Manageback link: https://uwcseaeast.managebac.com/student/ib/activity/cas/19684009/reflections

#LO4#LO5#LO7

Reflection 2 for music showcase

When rehearsals started to flow every week, I wanted to make sure I was familiar with the music from each show and so listened to the songs as much as I could. Every Tuesday for a little more than 2 hours we would have rehearsals and every fortnight we would switch from show to show in a 8 week cycle. For the show which I had a part in, the wiz, I decided to practice my lines in front of the mirror to know what I would do on stage, also I looked up videos on youtube to get some inspiration. In this musical showcase, collaboration is key to many scenes, for example in the wiz, we (using groups of five due to social distancing) collaborated to create a tornado using body motions in chaotic unison. Also for the staging when doing the scenes and the songs, I collaborated with my peers to devise the scene.

Manageback link: https://uwcseaeast.managebac.com/student/ib/activity/cas/19684009/reflections

#LO4#LO5

What are you learning about analyzing visual texts?

This unit we have been looking at political satire and cartoons aimed at various different audiences. These cartoons are typically used as a medium where the artist conveys a message.

I have explored into how to look into detail and see past what meets the eye; possible implicit messages within the image and how layered cartoons really are. I also learned of the importance of links within a text, allusions to other pieces, and background information.

Aside from analysis of the meaning of a cartoon, and the composition of the piece, signature styles, color, ways people are drawn etc.