CNY Break Check In

CNY Break Evaluation

More than half way through the academic year, I’m doing the second large reflection on the activities and services which I am a part of. I haven’t started anything new but I’ve kept with the same activities and services and further developed the skills and qualities within myself. I still enjoy all the things I do and will continue them all within the coming season. Balancing school work with my activities hasn’t become an issue yet, and I am still pushing my organization skills and continuing good habits. For many of my subject assignments I’m either ahead or on target with where I should be, but something I want to work on is creating better studying habit’s for tests as I still need to work on those. Below I will write a few short summary’s of my achievements, weaknesses, growth and goals within my activities and services based around the CAS learning outcomes question (way below).

 

Creativity // Photography for the Sports Teams and other // Photographer / Organiser  

LO 1 AWARENESS / LO 2 CHALLENGE

Photography is quickly becoming an important aspect of my life. While continuing on with my sports team photography, I’ve also taken on different opportunities as they come up. My Flickr now boasts over 2.5million views and I’ve been getting more requests for photos from the school. Recently I was the single photographer for the local GC service lunch hosted by our service executive team, and one of the three photographers at Kahaani Dance performance which I’ve written a reflection on here. In addition I’ve been taking photos at swimming competitions such as Feeding Frenzy. An aspect which I’ve found suprisingly difficult is staying organised not only balancing school work but also keeping track of all the photos and demands. As I take up more offers I need to be able to keep up with who wants what and when. So far it’s been manageable but I will need to really step up my time management when things get stressful. But I’m definately going to work on improving my skillset in photography and as I get more confident even branch out into the world of videography, as these could be really useful assets in the long term.

 

Activity // Swimming // Team Captain / Swimmer

LO 2 CHALLENGE // LO 4 COMMITMENT

Swimming doesn’t really change. Even since the start of the school year I’ve spent countless hours swimming countless kilometres. I’ve been working harder to achieve the goals I’ve set, and am currently working up to the annual SEASAC swimming convention this year held in Bangkok. A struggle recently has definitely been having the time to attend training sessions, especially with school work and the other activities. Yet I always go when I can and average over 7 times of my assigned 8 per week. In addition I went to all the “hell camp” sessions over the CNY break and tried very hard during the session as I could afford to be tired when I got home. To say the least it was very tiring; just under 40km over 6 days and really quite difficult sets including land&lactic tolerance combo, die-by-fly, 100×100 threshold set, and many more not-so-fun sets. But I got through it and I’ll keep getting through it for the rest of my time here at UWC.

 

Service // SurfAid (Global Concern) // Media coordinator

LO3 INITIATIVE // LO 5 COLLABORATION // LO 6 GLOBAL VALUE 

With Swimdonesia our main event done, things haven’t been as active within SurfAid. I still show up every Tuesday to attend the weekly meeting, mostly we talk about improvements that could be implemented next year. A representative from SurfAid came recently to talk to us about our contributions to the GC, this connected to LO6 Global Value as we learned about the importance of our actions to those in the remote islands and how much we’re helping. Recently we’ve been planning for the Family Festival, which is coming up in the near future.

 

Service // Tech Tinkers (College Service) // CAS Leader 

LO3 INITIATIVE // LO 5 COLLABORATION // LO 7 ETHICS

Tech Tinkers has been very productive this season with a lot of things happening and a lot of things done. Being a CAS leader means stepping up and really being seen as a organiser and a role model for the younger kids. I’ve really pushed myself within the service to expand my knowledge and confidence on things that I’m good at such as PC building and software diagnostics. As a service we’ve been pushing to be more organised not only for efficiency sake but also because the service office has raised it as a concern. Over the last season or two we’ve worked really hard and the results show. For the leadership team it’s been quite stressful dealing with all the logistics, meetings, and people but with good communication and collaboration everything rans really smoothly and hopefully will keep running well till the end of the year. We’ve been preparing for the new batch of grade 9’s so it’ll be exciting.

 

Service // Yoga with Tampines MINDS (Local Service) // Communications/Social Lead

LO 1 AWARENESS // LO 7 ETHICS

Yoga with Tampines MINDs is an activity that I have found to like quite a lot. Despite not being very long it feels like I’ve grown and developed even more than some of my other activities. By spending time with the Tampines MINDs clients I’ve grown very close to the members, especially my personal client, Jayce. It’s been a joy watching Jacye learn and develop his mental and physical abilities and skills within the yoga session over my time with him. Despite our differences there’s a way we communicate and understand each other that is very special and cannot be fully explained. In sessions I use the skills we learned at the beginning to help assist him and also grow me as a trainer, these skills include the show-not-force methods, and using sounds and visual stimulus instead of touch. Overall it’s been a pleasant experience and I hope to continue it for the rest of the year, watching growth in the clients as well as myself.

 

Questions Answered in passage regarding CAS Learning Outcomes:

The Goals

  •  What are my goals for participating in this activity?
  •  Do these goals represent a risk for me? Why/why not?
  •  How am I progressing towards achieving my goals?
  •  Did I achieve my goals? Why/Why not?

The Actions

  •  What have I planned to do?
  •  What am I doing?
  •  What kind of impact are my actions having?
  •  How am I feeling?
  •  What am seeing?
  •  Were my actions worthwhile? Why/Why not?
  •  How valuable was this activity to me and to others?

The Learning

  •  What am I learning about myself by being involved in this activity?
  •  What am I learning about others by being involved in this activity?
  •  What CAS learning outcomes have I achieved? How do I know that I achieved or failed to achieve them?
  •  If I were to do this activity again what would I do differently as a result of my learning?
  •  How can apply what I have learned to future activities?

LO 1 AWARENESS (Increased awareness of strengths and areas for growth)

  •  What previous experience have I had with an activity like this?
  •  What am I good at? What are my strengths?
  •  What would I like to improve?
  •  How has my involvement in this activity made me aware of my strengths and areas for growth?
  •  Have I improved and in what areas? How do I know?
  •  Why have I struggled in some areas?

LO 2 CHALLENGE (Undertaken new challenges)/NEW SKILLS (Developing new skills)

  •  What was it about this activity that I found challenging/difficult?
  •  What risks have I taken as part of this activity?
  •  What actions did I take to overcome these challenges?
  •  Were there challenges that I could not overcome? Why/why not?
  •  How will approach a challenge like this in the future?
  •  What new skills have I developed in this activity?
  •  How did I measure my improvement?
  •  Why were some skills easier to develop than others?
  •  How important were the skills I developed to achieving success in this activity?
  •  How can I use the skills I developed in this activity in other areas of my life?

LO3 INITIATIVE (Planning and initiated activities)

  •  What activities did I plan?
  •  What was the outcome of my planning? How do I know?
  •  How did my plans change as the activity progressed? Why?
  •  What difficulties did I face in executing my plan? How did I overcome these challenges?
  •  How did I respond to changes in plans? Would I respond the same way in future? Why/why not?

LO 4 COMMITMENT (Showing perseverance, resilience and commitment in activities)

  •  How did I show perseverance/resilience/commitment in this activity?
  •  How did I maintain my motivation for this activity?
  •  How did I help others or how did others help me to stay committed to this activity?
  •  What impact did my commitment or lack thereof have on the success of the activity?
  •  What things affected my commitment levels, ability to persevere or my resolve?

LO 5 COLLABORATION (Working together to achieve an outcome)

  •  Who did I collaborate with?
  •  What made it easy or difficult to work together with this person/people?
  •  What challenges did we face when working together? How did we overcome them? Why couldn’t we overcome some challenges?
  •  How important was collaboration to achieving the outcome or my goal?
  •  What could I do in future to be a more effective team player?

LO 6 GLOBAL VALUE (Engaging with issues of global importance)

Issues of global importance can include any issue that is significant on the world stage. Examples of global issues include environmental preservation; gender equality; race relations; child poverty; ageing population; the effect of pop culture on morality and traditional society; freedom of education; freedom of speech; fair trade; disparities in wealth;

  •  What did I learn about this issue?
  •  Why is this a significant issue?
  •  How have my actions had a positive/negative impact on this issue?
  •  How has my thinking about this issue changed as a result of my participation in this activity? Am I more open-minded, caring, principled as a result?

LO 7 ETHICS (Considering the ethical implications of actions)

Ethics are the moral principles that govern or influence our conduct. Ethics are the basis for what we determine to be the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ course of action.

  •  At what times did I face ethical decisions when participating in this activity?
  •  On what did I base my decision making? Why?
  •  How did my moral principles affect the decision I made?
  •  Was I ever in conflict with another person because our morals were different? How did we resolve this conflict?
  •  Have I become more or less principled as a result of my participation in this activity? Why?
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