Our school took the initiative and invited a few government schools to our school. There were six sessions and the sessions lasted for a total of six weeks. The purpose of this invitation was to allow the government school students to learn different activities not available at their school and allow us to teach them our learning. We had activities ranging from football, frisbee, basketball, dance, cooking, computers to choose to teach to the students. I chose to teach frisbee as it is the game which I learn at school and wanted to teach frisbee to other students as frisbee is comparatively very new and not known to others.
LO2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process.
The major challenge faced during the activity language barrier. Majority of the students from the schools were from government school and spoke their native language Gujarati. I am able to understand Gujarati but am not able to converse in Gujarati, hence it became a problem to give them instruction. It was impossible for me to learn to converse in Gujarati in the span of just six weeks so I sought help from my peers who speak Gujarati and asked them to give the instruction I was supposed to give. Also, I tried talking to them in Hindi and many students were able to understand it and I was able to overcome my problem. The challenge undertaken improved my communication skill with my peers and also I tried to converse in Gujarati sometimes but have miserably failed at each try but I was able to understand Gujarati better than before.
LO3: Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience
The service sessions in frisbee needed planning as we met students of different age, different skill set, and different learning pace. All the six sessions had one basic plan decided by me and my peers to teach the basics and move ahead as per the requirements. All six sessions had a different set of students which lead to the same plan always and there were less on spot changes required during the sessions. We decided to stick to plan and started with basic warm up, throws and drills. We also planned that the students will be divided among students so each and every student gets an equal amount of attention. After this, I realized that planning is always a better option than on spot work whether or not you are good at that field or not.
LO4: How commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences
The first commitment given to this CAS activity was attending each and every session. The sessions were held on Saturdays which are our holidays and it was difficult to prepare myself to take the step and attended the session. But after 2 sessions I started liking this activity and enjoyed it to my fullest. Also, perseverance here was shown as there were few students who were not able to learn easily and were not able to throw the disc properly despite teaching them many times but with time and help, they were improving which I felt like my own success. It is definitely not easy for me to commit to things unless and until I personally like the work. The same happened in this activity as I started to show interest I was able to easily commit to this activity.
LO5: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively
Working collaboratively is not a difficult task for me unless and until everyone finishes their assigned work. Working collaboratively was easy for me in this activity as everyone here had the skills to teach frisbee to others and were actively participating and completing their assigned task. But there were few peers who were not focused on the activity but were interested in playing their own game and not teaching. Because of the big group we were easily able to handle the problem by not urging them to teach but by taking the initiative to teach their assigned students. Teamwork played a very major role for me in this activity because of the Language barrier mentioned earlier but my team overcame this problem faced by many as a whole.
I believe I developed Communication and Caring learners profile. Communication because of communication between my peers and the government school students which were new to me. And Caring because I was respectful to all the students present there including students of younger grade from my school. The activity was related to any subject but the game which I learn at school. The activity benefited the government school students as they learned a new game and also many different activities from the six-session long event. I would wish to continue volunteering in these type of sessions as it gives me a chance to express my learning and the smile on students’ face when they learn something new satisfies me.
