To conclude the final bit of suffering in the IB program (all jokes of course), Im writing my final CAS post. I began this journey with a simple post; making goals, where I made specific goals for each element of the CAS program; Creativity, Action and Service. For the sake of breifness, I didnt actually acheive any of the goals except for my service one, which I reckon I did some form of mega acheivement on. That being said, my action and creativity goals werent acheived, but my acheivement in those two areas speaks for itself; countless new meals made, different sports tried (and successfully so), food eaten, waves caught, and so on. This two year experience has taught me that goals should be realistic, because, how is learning how to do an ariel realistic when I dont go to the beach more than once every two months. Its not, and I therefore should have set a better goal. Underdstanding what I can feasibly do in regards to CAS is something that has improved exponentially over this journey, which is linked to other stuff, like sports and things. Another thing I learned is how intermingled all this CAS stuff is. As a service leader, I often had to use creativity to come up with new projects for us to undertake, as well as undertaking said projects themselves, which often was an action. Approaches to action, be it in volleyball or basketball; coming up with new plays to do or coming up with a kickboxing regieme often used creativity, to consider the most ideal method of action. Same with creativity, creativity in the kitchen coulnt be possible without the action of cooking. That being said, action is definitely the best component of CAS in my opinion.

Learning outcomes:

1: Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth:

Pottentially the outcome acheived to the highest extent. I was often asked to by not only teachers but also myself to prusue excellence, be it in grades or in sports; identifying where I struggled and getting it in line with my other skills. Furthermore this outcome was often acheived in service, where I as a service leader strove to leave the service a better one then when I joined, using reflection as a tool to do so.

2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process

A harder outcome to show, esspecially in CAS where such a wide degree of relatable challenges were undertook. Perhaps the biggest in recent memory being setting out for a SAISA basketball season with a relativly unskilled rather less then super duper intelligent basketball team (subjectivly).

3: Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience

Service is a perfect example of acheivement in this outcome; take the huge changes to the very nature of the service or the home run, my CAS project, as examples.

4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences

As a dedicated SAISA athelete and engaged service leader, I found myself committing to CAS related things easily, despite a general lack of such activties.

5: Demonstrate the skills and recognise the benefits of working collaboratively

Much like previous reflections, this outcome may be easily related to both my service group, Housing and Habitat, which really highlights a collaborative and practical approach, evidenced by the planning of ECO schools, actually gaining the ECO schools certificate which was an interservice collaboration and the creation of garden beds. Alternativly one may consider both my SAISA basketball and volleyball seasons where team, and collaboration were integral to our success, shown by good standings (third and first respectivly.).

6: Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance

ECO schools was created to combat the global issue of climate change, and is a group which my service and myself are deeply involved in since its formation at OSC. Furthermore, as a travelling SAISA athelete global exchanges of ideas and culture where made clear to me, and I now have better understanding of international sporting events and culture in hosting countries, which relates to global phenomenons like tourism, education, identity and globilisaiton, esspecially how I linked them to my in school classes like ES&S or geography.

7: Recognise and consider the ethics of choices and actions

This was always an outcome in the back of my mind, leading to making me a much more responsible individual, afterall, I dont really want to be suspended or like executed for violations of ethics. Regardless, ethics, even things simple like giving members of my SAISA teams or service group equal oppurtunities for success and room to speak were always considered, intermingled with each other learning outcome intrinsicly.

All in all CAS was a cool way to contribute to the OSC community, and made me a more well rounded student. Hopefully in that regard Im better then Kim Jong Un, who was actually an IB student, and failed due to not completing his CAS (fact of the day).

A huge thank you to Mr. Lockwood for being a great guide to this whole program, Mr Poulus for organizing service things, and letting us be involved in the ECO schools initiative, and Mr Leblanc, for fostering our leadership positions in our Service group.

SAISA basketball this year was hosted in Mumbai, India and consisted of 8 teams, the American School of Bombay (ASB, our host school and 2nd place overall, even though we would have beaten them), American Community School of Omman (ACS, rightful 1st place winners), the American International School of Muscat (TAISM, 4th place overall), the American International School of Chennai (AISC 5th place maybe?), Lincoln School (LS, last place), American International School Dhaka (AISD), and of course our school, coming 3rd place.

The season began in November meaning practice 3 times a week; on Tuesday, Friday (game day) and Saturday. Going into the season I was a bit skeptical of our skill, a mindset that wasent really disproven until after the Christmas break when our team really stepped it up a notch, after practising different offensive and defensive options, for the first time. It was this fundamental lack of basketball knowledge that caused this mindset in the first place and I was glad to have gotten rid of it. The entire season was filled with learning; because of how new our team was to basketball.

Overall, the tournament was great, and I’m glad calling it my last ever SAISA. Our team came second but we know we could have come 2nd, and the team that beat us to go onto first was rightfully deserved of that place. The team got a lot closer be it through our internal issues regarding our coaching, officiating of the tournament, the frickin prison food they served us (we litteraly had ramen and fries once for dinner) or our go-karting/mall run on the last day, we all became much closer, and drank prodigous amounts of coffee.

This post serves to show aspects of Creativity, as we had to come up with coaching solutions and Action, because the entire thing was about basketball, a physical activity. I cant really justify putting this as service unfortunatly.

In an effort to make the school more eco-friendly, the eco-school committee, a group of services at OSC comprised of Ecoschools, Recycling and Sustainability, Housing and Habitat, and a PYP-based Eco-schools subset, was formed. One of the biggest projects taken on by this group, in particular my group Housing and Habitat, is a series of garden beds that we will use to sustainably grow to produce. This project required us to seek the assistance of the OSC architect who designed garden beds that would be structurally sound and use sustainable amounts of resources.

On November the 3rd, about 7 of our group went during our service period on Thursday (any more and people would have gotten in the way) to learn the necessary skills to make our weekend building endeavors more efficient.

On the 5th, the Saturday after the instructional brick-laying session, we, as a service convened outside the science rooms, after SAISA practices. This day we laid about 2 layers of bricks; extremely little in comparison to the 5 layers we laid later, in less time no less. This was due to learning how to level the concrete and make sure the concrete was level because the ground we were building on wasn’t.

After a service day the following week, we leveled out our new working ground (outside the KG rooms) and built a plunger for the biogas chamber, which the Recycling and Sustainability group use in particular. The plunger was three components that we found in the design room (and of course asked permission to use); just a cut-open tennis ball, broomstick, and a single screw. After confirming that the plunger worked, we went back to work on the garden beds.

The most recent work day was the 12th of November, again, a Saturday after SAISA practices. This day’s group was small, but in the limited size we were able to work much more efficiently and all picked up skills and knowledge that grew over the 2-hour working period.  This was also by far the most productive working day, as we got the most work done, evidenced by the 5 complete layers that we did singlehandedly without any supervision, which were later confirmed to be perfectly done.

The huge progress we as a service have made, in terms of knowledge gained, relationships developed (with the eco-schools group and the Vidyaloka Vidtalaya school), and garden beds constructed has only accelerated, giving evidence that our group’s potential is yet to be reached. It is my personal goal as a leader to continue to develop these things and push our group to be as efficient as possible.

As part of our class fullfilments in french class we partake in a series of CAS activities, one service, one activity and one creativity, all related to french in some way. For my creativity, DP french students led by Ms Fert created a performance for the school Gala. Initially we were doing some random french song about the environment but we quickly changed to song we learned in one of our units; La chanson des restos, by Les Enfoires (see below)

This song is dedicated to helping the french organisation Le Resto du Coeur, an association “benevole” which as we learned in class means a welfare association essentially, one whos dedicated to helping others. Le Resto du Coeur is a famous French association which provided meals, proffesional guidance, lodging and other services to people in need:

“Mais juste à manger et à boire
Un peu de pain et de chaleur
Dans les restos, les restos du cœur
Aujourd’hui, on n’a plus le droit
Ni d’avoir faim, ni d’avoir froid”

“But just food and drink
A little bread and warmth
In the restaurants, the heart-restos
Today, we don’t have the right
Neither to be hungry, nor to be cold”.

From Le Chanson du Restos by Les Enfoires

The performance in the Gala was an experience as it was the first singing performance I’d done at this school and in 4+ years, with the performances before then being not really singing but as part of an instrumental ensemble with some vocals. Therefore, this was a new experience.

CAS outcomes: Because this was a group ensemble, I had to develop collaborative skills since we had to be in sync with each other and sing different parts of the song, coming together for the chorus. This meant that we had to develop communication skills, esspecially in french. Furthermore, as a group we had to persevere, learning a song in our non-native tongue and memorizing it in just 48 hours while having loads of other work. Overall it was a great experience and enabled future learning for us.