Officially concluding CAS.

Personally, I think that CAS has been the aspect of the IB diploma that has allowed for most the individual and personal growth. It was there to ensure that we got that essential balance between our academics and extra-curriculars. I feel that I have learnt a lot, be it through engaging in the Alzheimer's Community Service as a co-leader, or having weekly tennis lessons.
I sincerely feel that the CAS requirement broadened my high-school experience. Personally, I connected most with the Service aspect, because this was truly what took us beyond just school work, to expose us to the real world.

I have attached below, my CAS reflection form, which presents my learning against each criterion.

Concluding tennis lessons.

As IB exams are fast approaching, we are now winding up our CAS requirements. Last Monday, I had my final tennis lesson for this semester. Since I have grown to quite like tennis, I will be starting lesson again in June, after the exams.

This lesson was quite intense, and fun at the same time, because our coach made it into an obstacle course. This tested our memory, concentration, stamina as well as our speed and accuracy.
We were required to hit the ball, which would come from any direction, twice: once at the base line and one at the service line, then hit a volley, then navigate our way through a rope ladder laid on the floor, and then around 10 cones, to come back and start again.

I had never done something like this for tennis before, so it was a new challenge.

Below are some pictures from my last tennis lesson. Please kindly ignore the retarded facial expressions :)

Yearbook

We had our latest yearbook session today, on Saturday, which is not the usual day for the activity. This was done because some pages were in urgent need to be completed. I think the fact that nearly all our team turned up showed our commitment to the activity, and our teamwork.

I managed to finish several individual picture pages, and also start on the Community Service pages.

Alzheimer's Visit to the centre

Today's visit to the Alzheimer's centre was of particular significance, because we got to have a lengthy session with one of the patients, Mrs. Sheila.

This was a great opportunity in terms of learning and considering the ethical implications of our actions, because during the interaction it was important to be kind, considerate and take care not to offend or intimidate the patients.

Mrs. Sheila is in a very late stage of the disease; stage 3-4. During our session, the volunteers at the centre told her that we had come for a English class with her, as she was previously a English teacher and teaching is what she loved to do.
The first issue that arises here is however, whether it is okay to lie to old people, just to keep them happy. This is a significant aspect in terms of considering the ethical implications of our actions.

The second thing that most of our group were concerned about was the fact that, when Mrs. Sheila's driver came to pick her up, after only around 10 minutes of interaction with us, the volunteers told her that it was time to go home, and that she'd already finished the class. She seemed quite confused about the fact the class had lasted such a short time, and this is of quite significant concern, since this kind of thing can make someone in a condition such as hers more insecure.

After the visit we discussed this issue during our meeting, and felt that in a situation like this there really wasn't any right answer, because there are 2 sides to the argument. On the one hand, it is important to keep the patient happy, and also to ensure that she goes back home on time, but on the other hand, it is questionable whether lying is the best method to ensure this.

Overall, this was a good learning experience for us, and made us consider global issues in a wider way.

Update on Creativity, Action Aspects

Recent posts on this blog has mostly been about the Service project I am involved, so I decided to update with a post on my Creativity and Action aspects, that is Yearbook and Tennis.

Yearbook has been commencing as usual every week on Wednesdays. I am now helping out with miscellaneous pages instead of particular ones, and this week I start editing the Week Without Walls pages of Grades 6-11.

Tennis lessons have also continued, though a bit more irregularly than usual due to Mock Exams, assignments, etc. However, practices have been going on with the general focus being on improvement of skills and practicing for match-like situations.

In another creativity aspect, I have been doing art pieces comprising mostly of life-study paintings/sketches. This is something habitual that I have always engaged in, as I find art almost meditative. Even though I do not take the subject in school, I have not stopped doing random pieces at home, so I will be putting up some of them up on this blog soon :)

Alzheimer's goals for Semester 2

This semester will demand a lot of commitment and organization from Heesoo and I as there are several things to be taken care of before handing over leadership.
Related to this aspect, we will be observing potential leaders by testing various skills and engagement with the group.

We plan to make the transition as smooth as possible, and would like to give them both advise and experience. Since leadership involves communicating with the centre, announcements in assembly, as well as general engagement with everyone in the group, it is quite an extensive procedure.

In addition to this, we are also focusing on spreading awareness to the Primary School children and parents about the disease. To do this, we have come up with the idea of holding a drawing competition, where the task will be to draw a picture of their favourite memory. We would have to be careful while going about this activity because we have to make sure to inform the younger students without scaring them.
The pictures that the students draw will be selected and the best one from each grade
will be given a prize. This is done to further encourage the students to take part.
The best pictures from each grade will be given to the centre to put up.

Furthermore, during the Food and Fun Fair that is coming up, we plan to sell more cards and pens in order to raise money.

Final visit to the Alzheimer's center for this year.

Yesterday the Alzheimer's Group made a very special visit to the Alzheimer's center to round up the year of 2011.

This visit was different to others because of 2 main reasons:
- The purpose of the visit was to drop off the dry food items that our school community had donated during the past few weeks. This is the first fund raising activity that was planned, organized and initiated completely by ourselves, without any help from the foundation it self. By the end of it we managed to collect around 10kg of rice, 10kg of flour, 5kg of milk powder, 5kg of dhal and several jars of Sri Lankan style pickled chutney.

- In addition to this, we also got to actually meet and interact with the patients yesterday! This was a great experience, and our group members instantly engaged with them. We look forward to making more frequent visits to the center next year to ensure this happens more often.

Raising Donations for Alzheimer's

For the few weeks our group has been focusing on raising donations for the newly established Alzheimer's center. As they are still in the initial stages, the Foundation greatly appreciates any help given from volunteers.

On behalf of the Overseas School of Colombo, the Alzheimer's group decided to invite the school community to donate dry food items such as Rice, Flour, Dhal, etc, to be used for the purpose of the daily meal that is provided for the patients.

Heesoo and I have been very busy these days trying to get everything organized, and we have largely concentrated our meetings on spreading the word to the school community, as well as actually collecting the items.

Our strategy for raising awareness included sending an email to the school principle in order to gain permission, announcing the activity in assembly after this, emailing parents of the secondary school, and finally emailing the students to remind and reiterate the point.

This process has greatly improved our formal letter writing, and also our persuasive and informative skills.

In addition to the donation of food items, we have also been focusing on acquiring board games which can be used during the leisure/entertainment time by the patients. We appealed to the Primary School teachers about this, and got very good responses.

Heesoo and I are very proud of what we have been able to achieve through these meaningful activities, and have been getting a lot of positive comments from many teachers in our school about this year's Alzheimer's Service being a lot more active than previous years. That, more than anything, means a lot to us, and make us feel like we're actually doing a good job as leaders :)

Alzheimer's presentation during assembly

Yesterday during assembly Heesoo and I made a presentation about the Memory Box activity that we're planning.Additionally, we also appealed to the school community about donating dry food items to the centre, and the primary school about donating board games for the purpose of the entertainment of the patients.

The assembly announcement required quick adaptation, as the person who was supposed to give the presentation was not able to come to school, which required Heesoo and I to stand up to the challenge on such short notice. (hence I may have sounded like I wanted to run away while I was doing this unrehearsed and unexpected task :P)

The purpose of the Memory Box activity is to raise awareness about the importance of preserving memories.

All these activities are going to take a lot of planning on mine and Heesoo's part, but I feel that we're up to the challenge.

Supervising a Grade 6 class

Yesterday I was requested by Ms. Trina, a teacher at our school to supervise her Grade 6 class for 10 minutes near the end of the day. This was quite an experience, as the Grade 6 class proved to be a group of...enthusiastic, energetic and excited kids, especially so near hometime :P

I haven't gotten to spend too much time with kids of that age recently, and I don't really remember what I myself was like at that age, so I'm not completely sure whether this is true, but one of them assured me "don't worry, we are like this all the time", probably out of pity as I was running around looking foolish trying frantically to make them stay quite.

I would like to think that I made a good authority figure, with a certain amount of assertiveness, especially when I made sure that they cleaned up the classroom and put the chairs and tables back as they were supposed to. I would also like to think that they did not grumble too much about me, as I stood firmly by the door to ensure that they did not run away before they completed this task :P

All in all, I have learnt through this experience to really appreciate my teachers from now on, and perhaps also to exclude teaching as a choice for my own career in the future :P

Selling food for Yearbook

Yesterday at the Secondary Drama Production, we raised funds for the yearbook group by selling refreshments during the intermission.

I volunteered to bring drinks, but took part in selling other things as well.

Since the start of the new year, this was the first opportunity to brush up on my business skills. We worked as a team behind the counter, and were helping each other over all the chaos to ensure a quick customer service. :)

Link to Alzheimer's Blog!

As promised, here is the link to the newly created Alzheimer's Blog:

http://alzheimerscasosc.blogspot.com/

The blog is still in the early stages but members of our group will soon be accessing it and adding their thoughts, experiences and ideas on it, so please bear with us :)

Key Club Update: A blog for Alzheimer's.

Today we had a Key Club meeting where we discussed the need to create individual Service Group Blogs that will run regular updates on what is happening.

My co-leader Heesoo and I plan to get this blog up and running soon (in around 2 weeks) and I will post a link to it on here.

The blog will have information on funds we've raised, various activities we have taken part in, upcoming events and general information about the Alzheimer's disease.

During the second part of our meeting we took part in a small group activity where we discussed the interrelationship between 'Service' and 'Learning' and I realized it is essentially both of them together make up our unique Community Service Program at OSC. I really feel fortunate to be part of such a complete and whole-rounded program!

Upcoming goals for Alzheimers's

During our Service hour today we discussed the events that will take place during the remainder of the semester.

- Next week we will have a talk from a parent of the school Mrs. Elena Brodholt- Kourchenko, who works closely with the Foundation. This will be a learning experience for everyone and an opportunity to understand more about the disease.

- We also discussed the need to make a visit to the centre again.

Since it has now been opened and is functioning as a Day Care Centre now, our visit this time will enable us to actually interact with the patients.

We have planned for the visit to happen on 17th November and prior to that we have decided to ask donations from the school for board games such as Chess, Bingo, etc that we can take for the patients.

- The idea of a 'Memory Box' was put forward which will be directed at teaching students the value and importance of preserving memories. This is still in the planning stages and more information will be available soon.

Helping out on UN Day :)

Today was UN Day at our school; a day in which students express their individual nationalities and cultures through dress, food, etc; a true expression of 'Unity in Diversity'.

This year's topic was Child Right's and each homeroom held discussions and debates about what they think a Child's Rights are, and what we can do in the future to improve them.

I was part of co-supervising this activity, and through this experience developed my leadership and organization skills, as well as learn a lot about an issue of Global importance.

Tennis continues...

I have been attending my regular Tennis lessons on Mondays and my coach is now training me to take part in a friendly tournament that he puts up for his students each year.

This would be my first real tennis match and I am quite excited (and scared too!).

Lessons have now been focusing on the actual game situation and with lots of practice rallying and serving.

Below are some pictures:

New Creativity CAS: Yearbook!

This year in my goals I planned to fulfill more of the Creativity aspect of CAS and I chose the Yearbook activity to do this.

During our first meeting of yearbook I was appointed to create the 'Founder's Day' page and will be doing this for most part of the semester.

Through this activity I am learning something new, which is using Photoshop, and also exploring my passion for art in a different way, through technology.

I look forward to a good year in the Yearbook committee!

Alzheimer's Annual Walk 2011

Today was the Alzheimer's Annual Walk and nearly everyone in our group took part in it.

Like last year, this year's walk was also aimed at raising awareness about the disease and getting to know other people in Sri Lanka who are working towards the common goal of spreading the word and helping patients.

Visit to the Alzheimer's Center with new group

Yesterday was the new Alzheimer's groups' visit to the centre. This time, we were shown around by Mr. Tamitagama.

The visit was a great success, and it has enabled us to plan ahead for the group activities in the coming Year.

Mr. Tamitagama has offered us the priviledge of attending the patient's sessions with a Doctor and to conduct Memory Tests ourselves. This will be a great learning experience and oppurtunity especially since I am intested in pursuing Medicine in the future.

The centre is looking to officially open on the 21st and we have also been invited to the opening ceromony. However, since it is taking place during school hours, it might be difficult for us to attend.

Nevertheless, we have promised the centre that we plan to visit every month and take part in various therapy sessions with the patients such as cooking, art, music, etc., and our group eagerly looks forward to this.

Meeting for Community Service Leaders

Today we had our first meeting to kick off the Service activities for the academic year 2011-2012.

All student leaders were able to meet up with our supervisors and plan ahead for the Service sessions of this year.

The teacher supervisor for the Alzheimer's group for this year is Ms. Rossana Favero, who was in fact responsible for first introducing establishing this project at our school. Through her good relations with the Lanka Alzheimer's Foundation Founders Mr and Mrs Tamitagama, I feel that this year holds a lot of potential for us to work as a group in order to move our activity forwards.

All students were given a copy of the school calendar on which to plan the activities for the coming year.

So far, for the first semester from August - December, we have planned to sell raffle tickets, the remaining cards and pens from last year, take part in the annual Alzheimer's walk, visit the Center regularly; at least once a month, and finally attend the christmas party held for the patients in December.