It has been a crazy, action filled year. It’s hard to believe that it is already the end of the school year. I have learned a lot and grown as a person, flourishing with the skills I had earlier and acquiring new ones. This year I participated in two SAISA sports traveling to both Jordan and India to take part in these competitions. I also lead my service group Care For Paws to initiate more global and collaborative projects. By collaborating with Mr. Lockwood, we were able to implement the bio gas plant project as an extension of my personal project. These are some of the many important aspects to my high school experience this year. My participation in these activities have allowed me to develop my whole person over the course of the past year and to survive the rigor of the DP program.
Creativity
For this year my goal for creativity was to step outside of my comfort zone. I did this by developing my acting skills by taking part in the school play, conducting primary workshops and coding a website for my service group. A Midsummer Nights Dream pushed me out of my comfort zone to work on building my acting skills and overcoming my fear of performing in front of large audiences. It also demonstrated the importance of collaborating and perserverance. As it was important to work with all the cast and crew members in order to have made the play the success it was. This also includes pushing through the difficult scenes and wanting to improve and perfect scenes. At the start of the year I also participated in the ISTA program which enhanced my skills as an actor but also my understanding of the theatre program. As it was all foreign to me when I initially commenced the school year. ISTA was an outlet for me to become more familiar with these aspects but also to increase my awareness of the global perspectives in theatre and the importance of different cultures in influencing theorists. I also initiated and planned primary workshops, where I took on the leadership of educating the children the importance of recycling. For me it was important to make the children actively involved with countering the global issue of global warming and recycling. It was a challenge to teach the children as their intellectual levels were quite basic, which made me think in a different mindset to effectively spread the message in regards to the workshops. Lastly, I took on the challenge of coding a website for service group it was a lot of work as I used HTML, CS and some Java script to create it. Coding is notorious for its tedious details, which made it important for me to persevere and be resilient when I failed and had bugs that paused my progressed. But after two months of hard work, it was a reality which was such a rewarding feeling.
Action
This school year I participated in two SAISA sports which include: basketball and soccer. I was appointed the co-captain of the soccer team and I took on the role with honor. It was important for me to consider the performance and well being of not only myself but also the rest of my team. My goal for this year was to improve upon my mental game, whilst simulanteously improving upon the physical aspects of my performance. I put in the time outside of sessions to go running and workout to improve my physical fitness as this is vital when being a student athlete. It was important as I am a committed athlete and I am always wanting to improve and reach new levels with myself. As for my mentality, I took control of my thoughts and persevered when I felt down and discouraged. My soccer coach Mr. O’Sullivan helped my understand the importance of my attitude as it does directly affect my performance. But I feel as though over the course of the year, I have really strengthened my mental state and able to control my thoughts and be a role model to other members of the team. As attitude is everything.
Service
This was my second year as service leader and I wanted to really counter the global issues surrounding animal rights and overpopulations of dogs in Sri Lanka. Please refer to the following post to learn more about our service and what we accomplished this year ( http://dsamayawardhena20.edublogs.org/2019/05/16/service-reflection-semester- ). I was challenged by the limitations and controversial issues our service group attempts at overcoming. It was difficult but we were determined and placed that extra effort to making it possible. I had to ensure that our group was initiating new events both within and extending beyond our school community to really have a positive impact. This school year we collaborated with our school community to engage in global issues of animal rights through the anti animal tourism pledge, animal awareness day and of course our sterilization and vaccination camp. These events also recognized the lack of ethical treatment towards animals and was aimed towards improving their wellbeing. I also imitated the bio gas plant project with Mr. Lockwood to combat a global issue of irresponsible waste management. Through this project we are able to get our school community actively engaging in taking strides towards a more sustainable tomorrow. This project took a year of planning and collaboration but it was a success!
