Participating in karate has been really fun and also very satisfying because of all my achievements through participating in this activity. In August 2021 I took the black belt grading and after months of vigorous training, I finally obtained my black belt. Another one of my biggest achievements from karate is the fact that I have managed to make lots of friends and I have also become a good leader who the coloured belts listen to and look up to. Additionally, through karate, I have managed to improve and maintain my overall fitness and my mental wellbeing as well.
Me with my black belt!!
Preparing for the black belt grading was a huge challenge for me as I needed to be able to run 7.5km, spar 20 people consecutively, and break 8 tiles along with learning 3 new black belt katas and remembering all the previous katas that I have learnt before. The biggest challenge for me was running and sparring because my stamina is not that good. In order to improve my stamina I went consistently went running for two months before the grading, and once a week I would run around 9km so that I will be able to run 7.5km in the grading. In order to learn all the katas and remember all the coloured belt katas I actually spent lesson time teaching the katas to the coloured belt. By doing so, I managed to learn my katas, and I also managed to teach the katas to the coloured belts for their grading. One thing that I still find challenging, and I thought was really challenging during the grading was the sparring. I put a lot of energy into the first few rounds of sparring, but that really drained me and I got really physically exhausted and I was panting and really tired during all the other rounds of sparring. Nowadays, in order to improve my sparring, my friend and I spar every lesson, which is really fun and also really draining and we have to move around a lot and I keep taking all the blows. However, through the sparring, I can see how much I have improved, which I am really proud of. (LO2)
The main skill that I developed through participating in karate is my perseverance skill. This is because partaking in these physically challenging activities, such as sparring for 3 minutes with my friend after every lesson, doing planks, pushups, situps, and running are all really challenging for me, however, I never give up and instead keep trying hard to improve my physical fitness so that I will be good at karate. As I keep practising sparring with my friend, I can feel myself improving as I am able to throw my punches and kicks faster, I can aim my hits well, and I am less tired when I spar with my friend. Another skill that I developed through karate is leadership and communication. This is because as a black belt I have the opportunity to teach the katas to the coloured belts, hence I have to lead the group of coloured belts and ensure that they fully understand and learn the katas. Additionally, through karate, I have had various opportunities to make a lot of friends and learn more about them, which is something that I am really grateful for. (LO2)
These skills that I have developed through karate are very useful for my future, as there will be many challenges that I will face in the future, hence I will need to be able to persevere through these challenges, therefore allowing myself to grow. Leadership and communication are two important skills in the future, especially when I get my job as I would like to have a high position job, therefore I will need to be a good leader were the things I need to say will be clearly communicated and understood by all. (LO2)
Maintaining my motivation for this physically demanding activity was very easy because of all the friends that I have made during this activity and also because I genuinely enjoy this activity despite it being a challenge for me. Going to karate every week to meet all my friends, catch up with them, while also being able to improve my physical strength is something that I really enjoy, because I get to be mentally and physically healthy. Staying committed to this activity has allowed me to improve and obtain a black belt, and also make a lot of friends, which I am really proud of myself. (LO4)
Overall, I am really proud of myself for persevering through this physically challenging activity and allowing myself to develop my leadership and make new friends. I am looking forward to participating in karate for an even longer time to continually improve my physical and mental health.
IFP, Initiative for Peace, is an activity where we learn how to be better leaders and peacebuilders, and we put this learning into effect by planning and holding a conference where we teach others the importance of peacebuilding and being inclusive. Pre COVID, these conferences were held overseas in Myanmar, however since we are unable to travel, we instead held this conference in our school for the 11th graders. The theme of our conference was to teach the grade 11s how to be more inclusive, and this is a really important skill that the 11th graders should know because, in 11th grade, approximately 40 new students join our school. This means that the students need to put in an effort to make sure that the new students feel included and welcomed in a completely new environment away from all their friends and the things that they are comfortable with. In order to ensure that our conference had significant outcomes, we made booklets for each of the students so that they could note down the learnings from each of the groups and look back to it later to ensure that they won’t forget it.
Investigation
We started planning this IFP conference on the 2nd of March 2021, and the final conference was on 16th August 2021. We met every week on Tuesday until the 15th of July 2021, which gave us 23 hours and 30 minutes overall to plan this conference and ensure that it is engaging for the 11th graders. Our first step of the planning was to choose what theme we wanted our group workshop to be on. My group members – Teia, Trisha, Riachany, and Menglin – and I knew from the start of the planning that we wanted to do a conference on inclusion and conflict resolution. This is because as grade 11s we understood how important it is to be inclusive because, in addition to the 40+ new students joining the grade, there are also more than 50 FIB students who will also be a part of our grade. This means that almost half of the grade will be comprised of new students, therefore it is important that we are inclusive as a grade, not only to make the new students feel welcome but also for us to be able to make new friends and connections. The reason why we chose conflict resolution is because it is a good skill to have in life, especially in managing friendships and any sort of relationship.
In order to make our presentation different from the other groups, we chose our main activity to be a scenario where the students will be able to think about and reflect on what steps they can take to resolve the conflict. This activity is beneficial for the students as it allows them to think about all the stakeholders involved in a conflict and how various choices will affect different stakeholders. therefore through this activity, they will be able to stop and think about the best solution for a conflict, which benefits all the stakeholders and ensures that none of them gets hurt. Additionally, through this activity, the students will learn the importance of being objective when resolving a conflict.
My group and I planning the conference
One thing that I find challenging about the planning is how to plan a session that will keep all the students engaged and ensure that they will actually understand the importance of conflict resolution and inclusion. One way in which we have made our activity more engaging is by having icebreakers such as hotseat at the start of our session so that the students will start the session with a lot of energy, which will persist throughout the session.
Development
The next stage of the planning process was presenting our ideas to the rest of the IFP group and obtaining their feedback on what we should improve on and what we did well. Our initial idea for the activity was a debate in which one group was for vaccinations and the other group were against vaccinations. After talking with the rest of the group we realised a few challenges that would come with this activity. The first challenge is the fact that we will not actually be guiding them on how to resolve conflicts, but instead, we are asking them to get into a conflict with each other. Another challenge with this activity is that it will be hard to put the students into groups due to covid restrictions. One of the biggest challenges with this idea is the fact that it will be hard to make it inclusive because usually one member would do all the talking and the other members would just sit and listen, there would be no form of inclusivity present. However, a good thing about this idea was the fact that we would be able to make the students reflect that the end of the debate on how they might have resolved this conflict if they were a facilitator.
After choosing our idea, our next step was to create a slideshow for our group and to delegate tasks to the members to ensure that all the required tasks will be completed on time. We also wanted to make a padlet with articles and real-world examples showing how people are being inclusive and how conflicts are being resolved worldwide. Our final presentation is linked here, and we put time and effort to ensure that the presentation looked engaging so that the students would actively listen to our presentation.
The biggest challenge that we faced during this stage of our planning was the fact that we had to go online for the last couple of weeks of school, which prevented us from running through the activity as a group. However, during the online sessions, we managed to come up with the introduction and ending for the entire IFP conference. During this time we also came up with the idea to make a booklet so that the students would be able to track down all the things that they learnt and look back at it later. Another good thing about these online sessions is the fact that, despite not being together and using a different medium than we intended to, our group ran through our session and got valuable feedback from the rest of the IFP group.
Overall, the development phase went smoothly, and we managed to finalise our entire session before the run through, hence we got useful feedback which we implemented into our session.
Action
As mentioned above, the final IFP conference was held on 16th August to the grade 11s. This was actually the first day back from summer break, so it was pretty nerve wracking to hold a conference and present in front of all the grade 11s. During our presentation, we first held an ice breaker, then we introduced what conflict resolution is and why it is important. Then we went on to discuss the two scenarios and gave the students time to discuss a solution to the conflict that was presented. After this we asked the students to present their ideas then reflect on the whole session and what they learned. We also provided them with some websites for them to learn more about conflict resolution.
The biggest challenge associated with the presentation of our conference was the fact that there were many students that were stuck overseas and had to participate in the conference online. This made it really hard for us facilitators to properly do the session as we needed to adapt the icebreakers and had to put more effort into making the session enthusiastic. Another challenge that we faced was that the conference was held on the first day back from the 2 month-long summer break, therefore all the students were still tired from summer break and they didn’t have as much energy we expected. This caused the conference to be a bit dull, however as facilitators, we put in extra effort to ensure that the students got some energy from us and enjoyed the conference.
Photos of the students during the conference
Reflection
Personally, I really enjoyed taking part in this activity and I feel like we made a positive impact on the students and guided them on how to resolve conflicts and be more inclusive as a grade. However, with COVID, and all the restrictions in place, it was really hard to create and energetic environment, therefore the advice I would like to give to next years group is that they will need to be very energetic as facilitators to ensure that the students will feel energetic and they will enjoy the conference. I also feel like we could have done a few more icebreakers and energetic activities with the students so that they would have gotten more energy. Another challenge about this was the fact that it was the first day back from summer break, hence the students did not know who was in their new mentor classes and they didn’t have any time to get to know their classes better, therefore it would have been much more effective if the conference was held at the end or grade 10, or further into grade 11 when the students knew one another a bit more.
Overall, I think that our group did a good job in promoting inclusivity and guiding the students on how to resolve conflicts because as I look at the grade 11s now, there seem to be no internal conflicts within the students, and all the students, even the new kids and the FIB get along really well. Additionally, I asked my grade 11 friend about how useful our conference was and she said that it really helped her understand the importance of inclusion especially during grade 11, and she even took the first step and talked to a lot of the new kids and became friends with them.
My family and I always loved to go for morning walks in all different parks in Singapore, however after Covid hit we couldn’t go out that frequently anymore. Around December of 2020, we got back into exploring different parks in Singapore and spending more time in nature which I am really happy about. For my NYAA outdoor appreciation, my goal is to spend the month of July surrounded by nature and exploring different parts of Singapore that I have never explored before.
During the month of July in 2021, I went to various different places in Singapore, most of which I have never been to before, which was a really great experience for me. I spent the entire month surrounded by nature and looking at various different species of plants and animals which I have never really seen before in Singapore. I also did various activities such as cycling, trekking, running, walking, and even stargazing which was really fun.
I started out the month by going cycling with my friends, which was something that I was really looking forward to since we had online school and I haven’t seen my friends in a long time. We met up at around 11 am in ECP and decided to cycle all the way to Marina Bay and cycle around there then cycle back to my friend’s home for a late lunch. Around 80% of our cycle was in ECP which was just such a beautiful experience as it wasn’t sunny and on one side we were covered by huge trees and on the other side, we could see the ocean and the sea breeze made the entire ride so much better. After we cycled through ECP, we went through the park connector that brings us to Marina Bay, and to my surprise, we saw a family of otters sunbathing there! This was actually my first time seeing otters in a place that is not the zoo, so I was really happy.
Lazarus IslandLower Pierce Reservoir
The next activity that I did was with my family. During summer break, I went to Saint John’s Island and Lazarus Island with my family and it was a magical experience because it was my first time visiting these islands, and they are so full of nature that I started questioning if we were really in Singapore. We put away all our devices for the whole day and spent the entire day exploring the island by walking around and cycling, which was a really beautiful experience. It was really wonderful to be surrounded by nature and have the ocean right beside. This trip really made me feel like I am a part of nature, and I am so grateful for that.
Wild Boar at Windsor ParkOtters at ECP to Marina BayMonkey at Upper Pierce Reservoir
During this month, I also spent a lot of time walking with my family and running in various different parks, such as Pasir Ris Park, Bedok Reservoir Park, Upper Seletar Reservoir Park, and Botanic Gardens. Pasir Ris Park, Bedok Reservoir Park and Botanical Gardens are all familiar places for me as I go there pretty often. However, no matter how many times I go there, I never fail to be amazed by the beauty of those places and all the nature that I am surrounded by. When I went to Pasir Ris Park with my parents in July, I actually saw so many animals that I have never seen before, such as wild boars, roosters and chickens. Seeing all these animals in the same area as humans, and not in captivity really made me appreciate the beauty of animals and how they make nature and our earth so much more beautiful. It was my first time in Upper Seletar Reservoir Park, and I think that this is my favourite place in the whole of Singapore because of how secluded it is from the city and any form of civilisation, it really feels like an unknown get away from everything, which is something that I am really grateful for. The view from that park is also really beautiful because all you can see is the huge reservoir, and all the other islands, which are other parks.
Windsor Park
I also went on a lot of treks with my family and I feel like participating in these treks is what really made me very connected to nature. We went to a lot of different parks which were actually in the forest, such as the rail corridor, Windsor Park, Clementi forest, And Lower Pierce and Upper Pierce Reservoir. It was actually my first time trekking in any of these places, so it was a huge eye-opening experience for me. I got to see so many different kinds of plants, trees, and all kinds of animals as well. When I went to Windsor Park, I actually saw a lot of snakes, wild boars, chipmunks and even some monkeys. As I already mentioned, it was actually really nice to see all these wild animals, not in captivity but actually in their natural habitat. In Lower Pierce Reservoir I saw a lot of monkeys, wild boars, and a lot of turtles as well. Another thing that I truly loved about all these treks, especially the trek through the Clementi forest and Lower Pierce Reservoir is how isolated we are from all the busy city life that is all over Singapore.
I really found this entire month spent in nature with minimised screen usage very healing and peaceful for me. It also allowed me to grow closer with my family as I got to spend a lot of time with them every day as we participated in all these challenging activities surrounded by nature. Additionally, through this month spent in nature, I felt really connected to nature, and felt as if I am truly a part of nature.
In the past few weeks of IFP, we started planning out the final IFP conference, and in order to help us with our planning, we had multiple workshops about how we can be better conference leaders.
I think that all of these workshops are useful for us because we learnt about how to keep our audience engaged. Our final IFP conference is going to be with grade 10 FIBs personally I think it will be easier to keep them engaged compared to the 5th graders we held a practice conference with earlier this year. However, I also feel that these 10th graders might get bored easily if they don’t find our conference interesting, therefore I think that we will need to try our best to make our conference engaging.
From Mr Alchin’s talk, we learnt about the importance of paraphrasing especially when it comes to ensuring that the audience really understands what we want to say and it also helps to keep them engaged. Of course, paraphrasing only appears natural with practice therefore in the upcoming sessions we have, I want to try to practice my paraphrasing skills with my group members so that we can incorporate paraphrasing in our final conference.
From Mr Q’s talk, we learn about the importance of structuring our session properly so that the audience remains engaged and understands the information we provide. So for our final conference, I think it is best if we have essential sections such as an icebreaker and a recap at the end, but it is also important to have some calming or ‘aesthetic’ music in the background as we learnt that learning works best as an aesthetic experience. It is also very important to make sure that we create a comfortable environment and be inclusive of everyone so that everyone feels like they can contribute to the discussions.
So far in the first two seasons of Sustainable Enterprise Consultants (SEC) we have actually done a lot to raise awareness about the issue that we are advocating, which is sustainable consumption and production (SDG12) but we haven’t actually made any impact on campus, like we haven’t physically helped any GCs yet.
As I mentioned in the previous post, I am in the communication team of SEC, and we have contacted GCs and made them aware of our presence and we let them know that we are here to help them make better decisions on how they can be more sustainable. We also made posters about SDG12 and the triple bottom line. These posters will be put up on the blackboards in the plaza, and it will help the students to learn more about the issue that we are advocating. We also create a slideshow that will be shown to the grade 4s and 5s so that they can learn more about sustainable consumption. Through this, we hope to foster the ‘ethical thinking’ mindset into children at a young age, so that they will choose sustainable options and products when they are older.
photo of me in SEC with a brainstorm of ideas about what we can do to raise awarenessphoto of me working on the presentation in SEC
By making these posters and the presentation I have learnt a lot about SDG12 and sustainable consumption. The main thing that I learnt is that SDG12 is all about sustainable consumption and production, which means choosing renewable resource, recycling electronics, not buying unnecessary things, etc. I also learnt about the triple bottom line, which is a sustainability framework that focuses on the ecological and social aspects of businesses. This issue of overconsumption is really important because we need to realise that there will be many generations living on this planet after us, and we need to make sure that there are enough resources for them to survive with as well, so we need to be sustainable in the way we consume (LO6).
Participating in this activity has also made me rethink how ethical I am and how I can change my consumption to make it more sustainable. For example, recently my family and I went to the grocery store but we forgot to bring reusable bags. However, instead of choosing to get plastic bags, we chose to carry the items with us because we didn’t buy that many items. Another time was when I was contemplating whether or not to buy an iPad for my studies. In the end, I chose not to because I realised that it is not necessary for me to have an iPad at the moment, and it will just lead to an increase in electronic waste. These two decisions were based on SDG12 and the fact that I wanted to make sustainable choices and ensure that my consumption is sustainable. By doing so, I will also set up a good example for the people who we are planning to help because if we can’t make a change in our habits, then how will we make a change in other people’s habits? (LO7)
Since grade 6 I have been doing all types of service that aim to help the community, for example in grade 9 I did arts and craft with preschool children, hence making their days much better. Through all these services I realised that I am good at planning activities, for example during SEC I was the one who planned how the slides should be and what information to put on the slides. Through this activity, I would like to improve my communication skills and hopefully, this can be done through communicating more with the GCs that we are going to help – so I will be obtaining my personal goal of being a better communicator, and I will also be obtaining the service’s goal of making the GCs more sustainable. (LO1)
I did my karate grading back in December and I am officially a brown-black (brown tip)!!! I am honestly so proud of myself and I did find the grading really challenging but I am so glad that I put lots of effort during my karate lessons, and I am so glad that I pushed through.
Here are photos of me receiving the black tip (on my brown belt) 😀
The grading was a big challenge, and I was so sore afterwards and I had so many bruises on my arms and legs but I had so much fun taking part in the grading and I am just so proud that I passed. The running was a huge challenge for me because I usually only fun 4.5km, so running 6km was really hard. Another factor that made the running really challenging was the fact that I did not train for it at all, like the last time I went running was around 5 months before the grading, therefore I completely lost all my stamina and I just found the running really challenging. Luckily my dad was running alongside me, so he kept motivating me and telling me to keep going. For the next grading (which will be in August), I will be taking my black belt, and I’ll have to run 7.5km. In order to train for that, I have been running more often (like around once or twice a week), therefore I don’t completely lose my stamina. (LO2)
Another challenge of this grading was the sparring. I had to do 12 rounds of sparring, and most of them were guys who were much taller and stronger than me, so I got beat up! The sparring was also challenging because it was really hard to control my strength and ensure that I don’t run out of stamina by the 10th round. For my next grading I will have to around 15 rounds of sparring and then another 5(?) round of sparring with black belts. I am pretty scared about this, but I feel like in order to approach this challenge I will just have to train more. For example, during Monday training I could stay back and do some sparring with the black belts and learn some techniques from them. Another plan of mine is to start building arm muscle so that my punches are much stronger because as of now my kicks are very strong, but my punches are pretty weak. I guess the main skill that I need is confidence and perseverance because I really do need to believe in myself and believe that I can spar all these people without getting beat up! (LO2)
I guess by doing all of these challenging activities in karate and still pushing on and looking forward to my next grading in August really shows my perseverance and commitment for karate. My main motivation factor for karate is my progress and the fact that I have come so far since 7th grade and I am so close to finally reaching my goal of getting a black belt. Going to training in the CC has helped me make so many new friends and they all help me stay committed to karate because I really do enjoy spending time with them, and if not for karate then I just won’t be spending any time with them. (LO4)
So for now I will just stay committed to karate and train stronger and harder until my grading in August where (if I pass) I can finally get my black belt!
So far we have had around 2 months of IFP, and during these sessions, we discussed various topics such as collaboration, conflict, violence, and peacebuilding.
Conflict and violence are very tied into one another, usually, conflict leads to violence. However, I believe that although conflict is inevitable (due to everyone’s differing opinions), violence is inevitable if we consider the consequences of our actions and take other people’s opinions into account before making decisions. Violence does not necessarily only have to be physical, it can be emotional, verbal or even cultural, and I strongly believe that all these forms of violence can be avoided if only people become more self-aware and less selfish.
We also discussed the different forms of conflict and violence that arose from the movie Crazy Rich Asians. This movie sparked a lot of controversies because of the lack of representation of “brown” people – Indians and Malays – in Singapore. One response to this movie mentioned the racism present in Singapore, and how nobody talks about it, and I kind of agree with this, but I also believe that the levels of racism in Singapore are not as high as other countries such as the USA. I believe that certain forms of conflict might take hundreds of years to be resolved, or it might never be resolved. This is because humans are just naturally very self-centred narcissists who will find the smallest of things to use against others as long as it leads to them feeling more superior to others. However, I believe that through educating people, they will learn more about the consequences of violence and why they should not act upon the conflicts they have with others, and instead should try to resolve them. This will definitely make the world a more peaceful place.
We also did an activity a few sessions ago, where we spilt ourselves into two groups, the Jahs – a poor country that doesn’t trust rich countries as they have been exploited by them – and the Kays – a rich country that have good intentions that just wants to help the Jahs. The Jahs were not given any information about the Kays other than the fact that they are a rich country, and the Kays wanted to help Jah prosper and be a better country. The objective of this task was to come to a conclusion on how the Kays will be able to help the Jahs, but the misinformation and being unable to communicate effectively really prevented us from getting to a conclusion, instead we reached a conflict. From this activity I learnt that in order to communicate effectively and maintain peace, we need to let others make their statements without any interruption, hence building a wall of trust between the two parties. We also need to keep in mind that everyone has different opinions, hence it really will not be effective to have one single person represent a whole group of people. If there was only one person representing a whole group, then there is bound to be internal conflict within that group, and this might hinder their ability to interact with others.
So far in IFP, I have really been able to build my collaboration skills (LO5) and I have also been able to learn more about how to be a better collaborator and maintain peace instead of creating conflict.
The service that I have chosen to do this year is Sustainable Enterprise Consultants (SEC). SEC is a leadership college service that aims to guide the other services (mainly GCs) in our school and help them to be more sustainable and have ethically sourced products. Essentially we are consultants for the GCs in our school, and I find that really interesting, hence I signed up for this service.
So far in this service we have split ourselves into different groups, I am in communications, and we have also done the goals setting of SEC. Personally from this service I want to have an increased awareness of my strengths and areas for growth (LO1) as I believe that a service like this is something that I might want to do in the future (being a consultant). I also hope to engage with issues of global importance (LO6) such as sustainable products and ethically sourcing materials and goods. Lastly, I also want to consider the ethical implications of actions (LO7) through this service as we will be guiding GCs to ensure that they are making ethical choices.
