Tuesday, June 24, 2014

What Is CAS?

CAS is one of the central components of the IB in which students must participate in activities involving creativity, action and service. Examples of activities like these are student-initiated activites, challenging activities, and we must be involved in at least one project which combines two or more of the components (creativity, action or service).

FINAL CAS REFLECTION
During these two years of IB, doing CAS really benefited me in several ways.
-CAS helped me achieve all 8 of the learning outcomes and to realize that learning is much more than just textbooks. I learned to relax from academics and appreciate other aspects of life in which other people with whom I may or may not have too much in common with participate in. Many of my service activities also made me be more grateful of what I have because it made me realize the struggles others go through. This inspires me to work harder, because I now realize that I am extremely lucky and it would be wasteful not to take advantage of the opportunities life gives me.
-I mostly enjoyed challenging myself and doing things I never would have expected myself to do. An example of this was my ballet recital. I stopped taking ballet classes years ago and it was one of the most heartbreaking decisions I ever had to make because I thought that I would never step back on a stage again. When you stop doing ballet at the age of 12, this is what you are always told, and I had accepted it. When I took up ballet again now, I was aware that I would never be at the level I had been at before so I went merely to enjoy dancing again. It was to my surprise that I was asked to participate in the dance school’s end of year performance. Out of nowhere, I had the guts to accept and there I was, every Saturday from January to June at the rehearsals. Some of these were better than others but before I knew it, I was on the stage again, extremely scared thinking I was going to faint but nonetheless there, giving it my all. Not only did I perform the dance “Argitasunerantz” once, but twice because we went and re-did it in another theater a week later. This taught me to never assume something is over or that it is the last time for anything because there is always a second chance, opportunity, even when you least expect it.
-Another part of CAS that I really enjoyed was the sense of belonging I got from the different communities I joined by doing the activities. With Flute I got to know people in the music world, in ballet people passionate about dance and the people at the surf school have become a sort of second family to me now.
-What I least enjoyed was writing as many reflections as were required. There were some activities such as surf, which I feel that I did have something new to say quite frequently because each surfing experience is different (the waves are different meaning that the techniques you practice vary) and therefore I did have a lot to reflect on. Other activities however such as Flute or Ballet, I found that doing them was extremely benefiting to me as they strongly contributed to my holistic learning process but that writing so many reflections ended up taking more time than the actual activity, because there was not too much to say each time the activity was carried out because it takes a long time to develop skills in these activities. I think that CAS would be a much more enriching experience if less paperwork was needed because this way, something that should be about relaxing and forgetting about academics ends up being one more homework assignment to deal with because of the reflections.
-If I were to do something different it would probably have been to promote my activities a bit more. By this I mean that some of the things, especially the service activities are good for society in general but that many of these actions go unseen. Until I did CAS, I knew about the food bank but I never knew how people got involved in it or what it really consisted in. I think that getting people from school, even those who are not yet IB students and do not have to do CAS as a requirement, to participate in these kinds of activities would be great. I think that I should have promoted and let not only other CAS students know about activities, but as many ASB students as possible.