CAS Final Reflection: Lessons Learned

The Creativity, Action and Service (CAS) program was an important part of my IB journey. It ensured the balance between physical and mental activity, motivated me to develop new skills and escalated my confidence.

The reflections posted in this blog as a part of the program helped me to track the progress and fully understand and recognize the accomplishments and achievements I have made. 

In the beginning of each year I posted a set of goals I would like to achieve. Some of them were to improve my language skills, to become more confident and sociable, gain skills in different teams sports, contribute to the community service and participate in creativity events such as concerts and productions. I am happy to share that through the hard work and determination I have achieved all the goals I have posed in the beginning of each of the two years of IB program.

All the CAS experiences are tied up to 8 learning outcomes such as initiative, collaboration, challenge, awareness, global values, ethics, new skills and commitment. Despite some learning outcomes were addressed more often than the others, all of them were involved in my learning experience. In this post I am going to reflect on all 8 outcomes providing links to the experiences I have had during these 2 years.

Creativity

The creativity aspect of my journey was mainly related to performing art, particularly music and drama. During the 2 years of the program, I took part in an a-cappella female voice group where I significantly improved my vocal skills and gained some knowledge about harmonizing and vocal parts in the piece of music.

Practicing harmonies developed my ability to hear other vocalists and sing my part so that it makes the sound complete and sophisticated. This required great collaboration skills between all the members of our vocal group. Moreover, sometimes we were encouraged to improvise which appeared to be quite challenging in the beginning. However, every time I tried I sounded better. Now, it is considerably easier for me to ‘invent’ a back vocal part for the song or sing a song in a completely different from the original version style.

Apart from being a part of girls’ vocal group during DP1, I was part of the student rock band called “The Sweet Chains” which was created in the beginning of DP1 and lasted till the very end of DP2. The band was an entirely our (my friends’ and mine) initiative. Thus, we have been organizing all the rehearsals and practices ourselves alongside our studies. Sometimes in order to get our performance done, we sacrificed our leisure time and even cut some of the other activities which is the apparent sign of our attitude and commitment.

During the time of attending the Overseas School of Colombo I participated in multiple music events and talent shows such as The Gala Concert, The Music Makers, The OSC’s Got Talent, The Gecko Factor and Food and Fun Fair. In addition, I participated in and helped my friend in organization of a music event called “Unplugged sessions” which was about bringing musically talented students and the other students who regard music as an indispensable part of their lives together once more.

Drama was another exciting experience I have had which goes under the Creativity component of the CAS program. The massive production of musical “Bugsy Malone” took place at my school during the 12^th grade. I haven’t had any significant drama experience before apart from small sketches we set during the regular classes at school or pre-school productions I have taken part in back in my home country. Therefore, I auditioned for the role in this musical purely out of curiosity as I was interested to know and investigate atmosphere of drama production from the interior. And though I had a minor role I have acquired some new skills in terms of acting and performing.

Action

Action has been an important part of my IB life. The balance between intensive mental workload and physical activity was imperative in maintaining healthy lifestyle.

Even though I participated in 5 out of 6 sport seasons during these 2 years, I only took part in 2 SAISA tournaments primarily due to the document complications. Specifically, I participated in team sports such volleyball, basketball and football.

Volleyball was the main sport for me and I have taken part in 2 volleyball SAISA tournaments. Considering that I have never practiced (new skills) volleyball with professional guidance and assistance before, I have made a remarkable progress in terms of my skills. However, based on the last experience I still have to work hard on my confidence and spirit as these are the major factors that hamper me from fulfilling my potential on the court. In regard to my achievements, after one season of practicing I have joined starting six of the team, significantly developed my spiking and serving skills. Even during the first season, despite I wasn’t part of a starting six I held a Libero position which is the position given to outstanding receivers and servers.

Basketball and Football were two other sports I have practiced. For both sports, I eventually became part of the team, but unfortunately I could not travel for the tournaments. I am proud to say that I improved in both sports and gained moderate knowledge of techniques, strategies and rules I’ve never known before and developed more sophisticated understanding of these sports.

In addition, as I was involved in these sports, they sparked even broader interest and motivated me to read more about related sport events and news. This significantly raised my knowledge of following sports and the ethics related to them. I have been constantly seeing news concerning doping test failures and disqualifications. This broadened my understanding of sport as a whole and significance of justice in it. As SAISA tournaments are model sport championships on the smaller scale, we have also been obliged to provide not doping test results but simple medicinal assessment verification before we were able to travel and participate.

Service

Finally, Service was a significant experience I have had. I have never been given such an opportunity to contribute to the community before and, therefore, this experience was entirely new for me. During the 2 years of IB, I have attained service “SOS Village” which deals with orphans. SOS Village helped me develop and grow as a person as I significantly reconsidered some of my life perceptions and values working with these children who at this young age have already gone through more than many other ordinary people.

The Service mainly introduced the other two important learning outcomes to me such as awareness and global value. SOS Village is as international organization which was established after the Second World War to support children that have been largely and tragically affected by the war. After doing some research on the organization and visiting its branch in Sri Lanka, I realized how indeed huge and important this organization and its activities are. I have learned about the other possible ways any person can help the children at the Village through subsidizing and sponsoring, I have also learned about the situation with orphans in different countries and contrasting conditions and opportunities provided at the Village and the other state orphanages. The attainment of this community service certainly set me on my way to help people in need. Once I have an opportunity, I am planning to further help and co-operate with this organization at my future location. 

In conclusion, CAS program was fulfilling and productive. It stimulated my learning experience and widened my outlook. The skills I have gained while pursuing the given program are highly diverse and utterly useful. The experiences have shaped the multiple sides of my personality and generally helped me to grow and develop skills I haven’t had before.