Student Portfolio

In term 2, the major objective of the Tabitha GC was to plan and raise money for the project week trip. We participated in two major events to raise money: Royal Hunt of the Sun theatrical play and Wavelengths concert.

LO4 (Commitment) – I showed commitment in the wavelengths concert as even though I was performing, I helped out selling goods during the intermission as well as helping to clean up after the concert. I also participated in the selling for a whole session in the sale for Royal Hunt of the Sun. I commitment has been shown to increase the sales and help towards the cause we are working towards.

LO3-Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience

By organising large events as such for a significant cause, I developed skills in leadership, planning, and preparing in advance.

I am continuing my work in the Tabitha Global Concern this year. I have been in this GC for 2 years and I plan to continue this for the next two years.

LO4-Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences. Students can articulate the stages from conceiving an idea to executing a plan for a CAS experience or series of CAS experiences​

I have shown resilience and commitment in this GC by being part of it for 2 years and continuing it. I participated in the planning and execution of every event held by this GC: Walk for Water, Family Festival, Nails for Nokor, etc. My commitment in this GC has impacted a lot on the success of the GC. Tabitha is quite small compared to other GCs in this school and my commitment made a noticeable impact on the speed and efficiency things ran. I helped by doing marketing, direct selling, planning posters, and many other things that helped.

This is the CAS reflection for my first term of my Local Service – Apex Harmony Lodge.

LO1-Identify their own strengths​ ​and develop areas for growth​. Students are able to see themselves as individuals with various abilities and skills, of which some are more developed than others:

I have identified many of my strengths and areas of development for my service. A strength is that I can speak Mandarin. This is very helpful because many of the residents are Chinese and due to their dementia, their english is not good anymore. An area of growth is my communication skills. I need to get better at communicating with strangers. My patient is blind so I need to focus more on auditory communication and more importantly, physical communication. An interesting aspect of working in a dementia home is that every week it will be a new experience for them of meeting me. Due to them unable to remember me, it will be a first meeting with them every time. This means I will be able to know them better and get better in connecting with them faster.

Talking to people with dementia is quite a challenging process. The main challenge is changing the way you speak to them so that they can understand it. For example, your sentences cannot be very long and a lot of times you need to repeat words or phrases loudly. It is also a challenge to read the people, because their facial expressions are not very easy to understand.

My patient, Mr Kan, is a retired company employee who speaks mandarin, english, and some malay.

LO7-Recognise and consider the ethics implications of choices and​ ​actions​. Students show awareness of the consequences of choices and actions in planning and carrying out CAS experiences:

Working with people with dementia is a new experience for me. Seeing tens of people sitting together in that state, holed up in a confined space inherently not doing anything is quite shocking for me. From this I think more about how ethical it is to keep them confined here. There is no cure for dementia in the science world yet. It is a slow process of the brain rotting and the body steadily decreasing in functions. These patients are mostly abandoned here by their family due to financial or social reasons, but to me it seems like a prison.

To take away this experience, I have learned a lot about dementia as a disease and how it affects people. The scene of a lot of people on wheelchairs huddled around a tv in a room without air conditioning. It made me realize how horrible the disease actually can be. However, the workers at the lodge are all very cheerful and optimistic as a way to combat the gloominess. This is something I need to learn to do as well.