Service sessions were held at Fountainhead School for 6 Saturdays. These sessions were for underprivileged students from a government school. The aim was to give them exposure to the extracurricular activities to get to know their areas of interest and talent; also it was an opportunity for them to learn and develop new skills. There were activities like dancing, art and craft, cooking, frisbee, football, basketball, etc. I opt for teaching them dance because dance is my passion and I enjoy doing it. In addition, I have been dancing Bharatanatyam and western dances since the age of 6; which, therefore, made the sessions productive.
Learning outcomes achieved:-
LO2 – Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process.
In the past, I volunteered a service session in grade 10 in a slum area where also I taught them to dance. Teaching dance to underprivileged children was not my first time, however, this time it was an all over different experience. The challenges I faced were:-
1) I was in the choreography team so we choreographed the dance and taught them whereas the others made them do warm up and some fun dance while we were choreography. We had to decide very easy steps and make the dance moves go very slow as students couldn’t practice difficult steps not even moderate steps; it was strenuous for them to catch the beat of the song, which is why we had to choose a song with a slow tempo. In this process, I realised that even after being professional at dancing I couldn’t think of easy steps’ which later made me realise that doing easier things are way more complex even after so much of experience and learning. So, in the end, these service sessions made my base at dancing strong.
2) One major problem for me was to communicate with the students. Not all students could understand Hindi; most of them understood Gujarati more easily when compared to Hindi. Since I personally did not Gujarati so I had to ask my partners to ask them to do things, for example, doing the move correctly. Although, communicating with them was a task for me, in the processes I did begin speaking Gujarati and also I could understand Gujarati. I developed my communication skills and I had learnt that language a little which made me capable of speaking to them partially in Gujarati by the last service session.
3) Another problem that I faced was that I did not the people who were teaching dance with me apart from 3 or 4 who were in my grade. Being an introvert, conversing with them was definitely a mission impossible. But, to the contradictory, the environment those students created with their curiosity and happiness to learn new dances, I reached my comfort zone and started a conversation with them, for a change. That was the moment where I could see the leader in me.
LO1 – Identify own strengths and develop areas of growth
These service sessions helped me increase my level of patience. There were many times when those children were not ready to listen and made chaos; since we had to be tender and kind-hearted me and my colleagues handled the situation with a lot of patience. However, It was really fun teaching them and every session those students came with such a great lever of enthusiasm that every session motivated me. In all, it helped increase my forbearance.
LO4 – Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences
For an IB student holidays are the best time to cover up in studies and complete different assignments since weekends are a holiday for us that was the best time we personally could devote to studies and extracurricular activities. However, as mentioned earlier these sessions helped for 6 Saturdays, which is almost one and a half month, and on top of that this was out of the school timings that too on weekend so we had to take out time for these sessions. Taking out time definitely involved self-management skills, by managing time completing all the work beforehand and then attending those service sessions. This genuinely shows my commitment towards CAS experience. Moreover, we had to plan beforehand with our colleagues for deciding the song and also to decide the steps which did show perseverance.
LO5 – Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively
As mentioned in learning outcome 2, we were in a group of students ranging from grade 7 to grade 11. We were more than 12 students and 12 students on the stage teaching 27-30 students would have been chaos and mayhem. So, we cooperated and divided ourselves into 2 groups; one who entertained the children and made them warm up and make them dance on fun and peppy songs making them do new steps, increasing the level day by day and meanwhile, the other group choreographed the song and taught them the dance as soon as they completed the warm-up. Our coordination made these sessions productive.
In all these service sessions, my base in dancing got strong, learnt basics of a new language, Saw the leader in me, increased my forbearance, somewhere my teamwork got better.
