Since March, it has been extremely difficult to keep up with my CAS work. I would have been writing about activity such as SAISA football, creativity such as my trumpet performance in the spring gala, and service such as finishing building all the school materials in housing and habitat. Instead, I have had to find alternative ways to do CAS work, such as the OSC zoom-a-thon for service, home workouts for activity, and personal trumpet practice for creativity. My time in the DLP (Digital Learning Plan) has helped me grow as an individual and taught me how to adapt to unfamiliar situations. Despite the lock-down restricting what I could accomplish for CAS, I adapted and overcame the challenge and still managed to do what I needed to do. The summer was an interesting one as well, due to the amount of time I spent at home. This wasn’t a very entertaining summer vacation, but it enabled me to spend more time doing CAS based activities and other school work. Now, a challenging year lies ahead of me due to it being my final year in school. The affects that COVID-19 will have on this school year are already making it challenging for me and its only the fourth day of school. The best thing for me to do at this point for CAS is to set some goals for creativity, activity, and service and work towards them throughout the year. The impacts of COVID-19 may force me to change my goals throughout the year, but I will try to set good goals now that I hopefully wont have to tinker with too much throughout my final year in school.
Creativity:
The closure of school in March was a big blow to my plans for creativity. If the school never closed, I would have been playing the trumpet in the concert band in the spring gala. In addition to this, I would have gone to ISTA as I did last year for theater this upcoming September. Instead of doing these creative and challenging activities, I had to settle for logging about my trumpet practice at home. It still worked out for me, because I got to work towards learning new songs as well as perfecting the songs I would have performed in the spring gala in April. This year I hope to continue my individual trumpet practice and learn and master at least 3 songs. This is the only goal I can currently guarantee that I will be able to accomplish, but I still have another goal that I may be able to accomplish if the COVID-19 situation improves. I hope to perform at least once on stage in front of an audience, whether it is playing the trumpet in the band or performing a theater piece. Hopefully towards the end of the year these goals can become possible but as of now, I am uncertain whether I will be able to complete this goal.
Activity:
Just like creativity, my plans for activity were shattered by COVID-19. I would have logged about the SAISA football tournament and my preparation for it. Also, I would have logged about SAISAs from this upcoming year which could have been volleyball and/or basketball. Instead of actively working hard towards playing in a tournament, I have to find a new goal. Over the summer, I worked out at home and used my garden to play basketball and improve my skills. I did all of this without really having anything to work towards other than improving in general. This year, my first goal for activity is to work out three times per week every week and track my progress. Also, I hope to play basketball at least three times a week and by the end of the year, be able to make at least 80 out of 100 shots in a shooting drill that I created during summer. I every week I will do this drill once and track my progress and hopefully reach my goal by May 2021. I am also planning to start playing tennis at least once a week for the rest of the year and I hope I can keep that up and log about it.
Service:
Prior to the school closure, I met with my service group called housing and habitat once a week for an hour. In this hour, we build tables and chairs for local schools and discussed plans for future fundraisers and events. In the DLP, I managed to complete a project called the OSC zoom-a-thon which I logged about in June. I did well to complete a major CAS event during the lock-down but I still need to come up with new ways to fulfill the CAS service requirements. My first goal for service is dependent on whether we get to meet for service again, but I hope to participate in building tables and chairs for local schools in the housing and habitat service group for an hour a week starting from whenever we are allowed to. Also, I hope to help organize the home run, which is a 5km run around the streets, later on in the year in order to gain money to fund our service group. We did this last year and it was a huge success for our service group, and I hope we are able to do it again sometime this school year.