And two years later…

This is my last CAS entry. It has been two years since I started CAS. There has been ups and downs and long breaks away from CAS but writing my final entry means that it is finally over and it is time to focus more on the final examinations. I remember our CAS coordinator always saying, "CAS is not about the hours, it is about you meeting the learning outcomes, so please stop asking me how many hours you have to complete for the next two years!!!" I remember him saying that often during the first year, but soon everyone caught on and everyone started working on completing the different learning outcomes.

There were a number of difficulties during the two years. One of them was meeting some of the learning outcomes, especially "engage in issues of global importance" and "consider ethical implications of your activities." On the other hand, I had plenty of learning outcomes like "work collaboratively with others" due to my participation in different sports activities. The hard part was trying to balance all these outcomes, avoiding to have too much of one, but even with that, some learning outcomes always kept coming back.

I mainly had one project over the course of the programme. My project was the Wobulenzi project. It started in the first year of my diploma programme when the whole class took a compulsory trip to WTA (Wobulenzi Town Academy), and it all started with my group and I doing a workshop that involved teaching the students of the school rugby. It was hard at first, they would most times get carried away and kick the rugby ball and play football with it. But when they got the hang of the game, it was sometimes fun to play. The real project started in the 3rd term when we got the idea of teaching the students french for one month. Although the classes only lasted 1 month, I am proud of what we accomplished.

There are many things that I learned during the last two years doing CAS, but most of what I learned can be summarised through the learning outcomes I achieved.

Student council is also for the cool kids :)

This is my last entry for the student council activity. Honestly I only entered the student council in order to get my CAS points and planned on doing nothing all year long. Things changed quickly. The student council meetings were always fun to attend. I made new friends and talked to people I would never have talked to outside the meetings. There were also awesome privileges that came with being in the student council but the most important one is that since that day, I never had to stay in line waiting for lunch. All I had to say was that I was in the student council and people had no choice but to let me cut in line, because the student council was there to listen to their complaints and why not do something nice for the student council too?

During my year in the student council, we discussed student complaints, uniform changes, planned parties, some failures and others surprisingly successes. I improved my listening and team work skills and learned a few other useful tips that will surely be useful sometime in the future. This is by far my longest activity and it was not always easy committing to the weekly meetings but I made it. Maybe I will be in some sort of student council in my university, who knows!?

These are the learning outcomes I achieved:

- Increase my awareness of my own strengths and areas of growth.
- Show perseverance and commitment in my activities.
- Work collaboratively with others.
- Undertake new challenges. 

Never too young to be a role model!

This activity involved supervising a toy distribution programme in the primary section of my school. I don't know if its the case with everyone but I always find it scary working close to little kids. You never know if they are going to kick you or jump on you at the same time. I guess this what happens when you watch too many movies. This activity was carried out for one month and I supervised the distribution once a week on thursday. Basically my role was to aid the student council during the process and maintain order sometimes because the kids were always very excited to get the toys and most times were always trying to fight to go first because the first one always had the most choice and the best toys. This activity was interesting, it showed me that kids are not the "little monsters" that they are sometimes portrayed on TV and helped me improve my patience and somehow my leadership skills because it was important for the kids to pay attention.

These are the learning outcomes I achieved:

• Undertake new challenges. It might not be scary to work with little kids but for me it was. It is always hard to make kids listen to you and you have to find different ways to use in order to make the little kids listen to you. This was a first for me working with kids that young.
• Consider the ethical implications of your activities. Working with little kids that age means that you have to act as a role model and use the appropriate language at all times when the kids are close by because the little kids tend to imitate older people.

Log Sheet

Activity	Area	Learning Outcome(s)	Evidence
Wobulenzi project	Creativity, Action & Service	-Work collaboratively with others -Consider the ethical implications of your actions -Show perseverance and commitment in your activities -Engage in issues of global importance	Reflections, Pictures, Supervisor Comment
Mtn Marathon	Service & Action	-Engage in issues of global importance -Undertake new challenges	Reflections, Pictures, Supervisor Comment
IWO Bazar	Service	-Engage in issues of global importance -Work collaboratively with others	Reflections, Pictures, Supervisor Comment
House flag design	Creativity & Service	-Increase awareness of your strengths and areas of growth -Undertake new challenges -Consider ethical implications of your actions	Reflections, Pictures, Supervisor Comment
Basketball	Action & Service	-Show perseverance and commitment in your activities -Work collaboratively with others -Develop new skills	Reflections, Pictures, Supervisor Comment
Volleyball as a new sport	Action	-Develop new skills -Work collaboratively with others	Reflections, supervisor comment
Volleyball for the school Team	Action & Service	-Increase awareness in your strengths and areas of growth -Show perseverance and commitment in your activities	Reflections, Pictures, Supervisor Comment
Backstage (Lion & the Jewel)	Creativity & Service	-Show perseverance in and commitment in your activities -Work collaboratively with others -Undertake new challenges	Reflections, Pictures, Supervisor Comment
Backstage (Macbeth)	Creativity & Service	Increase your awareness of your strengths and areas of growth	Reflections, Pictures, Supervisor Comment
IB option evening	Creativity & Service	-Undertake new challenges -Plan and initiate activities	Reflections, Supervisor Comment
Student council	Creativity & Service	-Increase your awareness of your strengths and areas of growth -Show perseverance and commitment in your activities -Plan and initiate activities	Reflections, Pictures, Supervisor Comment
Prom (Fundraising and organization)	Creativity & Service	-Plan and initiate activities -Work collaboratively with others	Reflections, Pictures, Supervisor Comment
Toy Distribution	Service	-Undertake new challenges -Consider the ethical implications of your actions	Reflections, Pictures, Supervisor Comment

We did not even make it to finals.

Final Reflection

This is my last reflection regarding the volleyball season of 2013. Of all the sports I have done so far in the school, I think volleyball and basketball are the ones that I have enjoyed the most. From the training in the first term, to the ISSAK league competition in the third term, volleyball was truly an enjoyable experience for me. I was really proud to participate in the first ever volleyball ISSAK league competition. There is nothing much I can say about the sport and the learning outcomes because it is the same as every other sport I have written about in my blog. Although we didn't make it to the finals, I really look forward to playing volleyball. Either this year during my last year of High school or in University. This was definitely not a one time thing. I spent too much time learning this sport! :)

Creative much?

Designing flag


It is always a problem being creative and smart at the same time. When you are a kid, it is easy to draw, it is easy to say what you want to become when you are older without any prior judgement. I remember when I was a kid, I loved drawing but as I advanced through my education, I lost that part of myself. So when I had the opportunity to design a flag for my sports house (Bwindi) I though that it would be a good opportunity to tap into my creative self. These were the achieved learning outcomes:

• Increased awareness of strengths and areas of growth. As I mentioned earlier, I used to love drawing when I was a kid. So doing this activity, it was an opportunity for me to awake my "creativity." You never know when you might need to be creative in life.
• Consideration of ethical implications. Making a flag always involves ethics. You have to make sure that nothing put on the flag is seen as an insult towards a society or religion.

The Bwindi Flag

The Tale of Macbeth

Backstage

The Macbeth production was a project that lasted almost one months. The production was divided in two stages. Rehearsals and the final production. Unlike the Lion & the Jewel, this was not a school production. It was meant to show for a whole week at the national theater. What appealed me in this project was the fact that this was not a school production, which meant that I could work with actual professional actors and this was a first for me. Although at first I had signed up to do backstage work just like in the Lion & the Jewel, over time, the director decided to give me a small non-speaker role in the play. Although it was out of my comfort zone, I decided to take up the challenge.

The backstage work involved taking care of the lighting and sound effect. My job was to take care of all the props and operating any backstage machines, like using the smoke machines in some scenes. Overall, I believe that I achieved the learning outcomes I had projected in my proposal form which are:

• Increase your awareness of your strengths and areas of growths. Since this was not the first time I was doing backstage work for a drama production, I knew what was to be done and the timing was very important. 
• Work collaboratively with others. Just like a team sport, a drama production is not something which is done by one person but by the efforts of a group of people. The people in the backstage are just as important as the actors acting on stage
• Show perseverance and commitment in your activities. Although this is one of the most common leaning outcome, it cannot be ignored. During the preparation of this project, we had to work late at night way over time, from 4pm even up to 10pm at night. There were moments when I felt like giving up, but all I had to think about was the final outcome of the project and that would keep me going, and the fact that it would give me community service.