Coding for Good has been a service that I have been a part of since grade 10. In the IB however, I now have the opportunity to lead the service. Coding For Good is a service where we write programs/apps/websites that address the needs of our environmental initiative, local and global service partners, our peers, and our communities.

In the week leading to the start of this service, the leadership team and I came together and analyzed our strengths and weaknesses as a service through a SWOT analysis and planned for the first 3 meetings. In this meeting, I took initiative and planned out the introductory first meeting where members will learn to use our systems and understand what our service is about. This included designing a website for a scavenger hunt and forms. So when the first meeting came along, we were able to run the service meeting smoothly even though the service supervisor was not there due to an emergency COVID quarantine situation. The way we were able to measure the outcomes was through seeing the team members answer the forms and go through the scavenger hunt without any issues. What I wasn’t able to account for was the motivation that different team members had. I needed to realize that leading a group of students from different backgrounds will require different methods for individual students. When executing the activity, it was important for me to gauge the attention of the students. If I felt that attention was decreasing, I would respond with a stimulus to regain their attention. For example, during the meeting, I would ask reaffirming questions in order to make sure the students understood their task. In the future, I would like to work on managing time and making sure that we are able to complete all the tasks in the time frame given.

In addition to planning activities, I also collaborated with my co-leader, Shun Aso. Because our service supervisor was not present, we had to rely on each other and our plan in order to move forward with the meeting. Because me and Shun have similar goals, we were able to split off and assist students in smaller groups and effectively get the tasks completed. Because of our different skillsets, we were additionally able to explain activities more sucessfully. For example, while I was explaining the Scanger hunt activity alongside the presentation, Shun was helping individual table groups with finding the correct resources. This helped students who were confused with the general explanation and allowed for the students where were ready to move on to advance through the activity. In the future, I hope we can switch up roles and further strengthen our leadership skills.