Final CAS Reflection

IB CAS Final Self Evaluation

          

Over my 2 years of IB, I have expanded my horizons with my involvement in CAS, and have experienced many activities that I would not have otherwise without CAS. I can safety say that over these 2 years, the various activities I have done have helped me develop into a more well rounded person, as the lessons learned from these activities taught me everything from how to work better as a group member, as a team leader and as an individual in my own time. I have met so many interesting people, and learned so many new skills that I scarcely know where to begin!

While CAS at the start may have seemed like a waste of time compared to my academic studies, I quickly learned that CAS was just as important, as it forced me to leave behind my books and become a more proactive member of school and local society. These seemingly small activities at the time quickly developed into full long term projects, and I found that the more I got involved with activities, the more opportunities for new ones kept popping up.


1) Increase my awareness of my strengths and areas for growth
I completed this learning outcome throughout these years with my long term projects such as prefect duty, flute, violin and crochet classes. In each activity, I build a self evaluation cycle at the end of each activity, by realizing my strengths at the end of each lesson and making goals for the areas I would need to look into for the next lesson. This goal setting practice continued even to the planning of activities, as I would write down things that I wanted to achieve in the next month at the end of each month. This growing awareness of my strengths has helped me in my studies as well, as I have constantly continued to find subjects or topics in my studies that I need to improve on, and rather than be discouraged, took it as a sign of improvement and awareness of my own strengths.

2) Undertaken new challenges or an extension of an existing one
During these 2 years of CAS, I often undertook activities and things that I had not tried before, whether it was golf, getting my first aid certificate, learning how to start a school club, or even going off to volunteer at a Hong Kong NGO for the first time etc. these activities launched me outside of my comfort zone, and as a result, I have developed brand new skills I wouldn’t have otherwise. Starting a blog or organize my CAS hours and reflection also allowed me to learn about basic HTML programming, something that I wouldn’t have done if I had never challenged myself with new activities over the course of CAS.

3) Planned and Initiated Activities
At the start of the IB program, I thought that the would be one of the hardest outcome to consistently achieve, as I often consider myself as a team player and follower, rather than someone to actively pursue and plan my own activities. This changed in during the completion of CAS, specifically in the creation of our school newspaper, as I now was in charge of the running of the club. This involved me often finding how to divide up tasks we needed to complete between people of different year groups in order to complete the newspaper. The confidence the club gave me meant that pretty soon, I was leading school wide activities with the school CAS project, and even outside of school by helping out with the RISE conference in Hong Kong.

4) Worked collaboratively with others
In society today, it is impossible to accomplish much without working together with other people, sometimes with those that have vastly differing ideas from yourself. CAS acted as a microcosm for this aspect, as in almost every activities, I had to work with people in my class, other year groups and even people I had never met before in activities outside of school. Examples of my team work can be found in not only school activities, such as helping set up and run parent teacher meetings or replacing locks on the school lockers, but also in activities outside of school such as selling poppies or working at the RISE conference.

5) Shown perseverance and commitment in my activities
While trying to complete this outcome, I became involved with many of my long term school activities such as Newspaper club, the school christmas carnival and the Year 13 CAS project. These activities taught me the importance of staying committed to my activities, as many of these events would not have been possible without the consistent effort being put into them over the span of week, sometimes even months of hard work. I also showed perseverance in my music classes of flute and violin, as doing so has allowed me not only to become a better musician, but has allowed me to achieve several goals I didn’t think were possible at the start, such as earning a certificate in Grade for flute with the ABRSM.

6) Engaged with issues of global importance
One normally doesn’t concern ones self with issues of global importance on a day to day basis. In completing CAS however, I suddenly found myself more perceptive what was going on in the world and the local society of Hong Kong. This lead to me completing many volunteer projects during the weekend or school breaks that I normally wouldn’t give a second though about, such as planting trees at Ark Eden, trying my hand at learning the second most spoken language in the world (Spanish) and helping with soap recycling. By considering how I could be a more proactive global citizen, I developed new skills and even came into contact with HandsOn Hong Kong, which provided me with even more opportunities to do good in the world, by spending a few hours volunteering for a good cause.

7) Considered the ethical implications of my actions
Like with learning outcome 6, I didn’t think that many ethical implications would arise from a few hours of extra curricular activities. However, this idea was quickly proven false with many of activities. For one, learning first aid made me question as to how many lives were lost that could have been saved if people took the time to learn some of the very simple techniques I was learning in the course. Going to Ark Eden made me more conscious of the food I ate, as I learned that Hong Kong imports over 90% of its food from abroad. These activities brought to light ethical issues I normally wouldn’t even think about in daily life, and it was only through the completion of CAS that I stopped to consider the deeper meaning behind the things that I spent my time doing.

8) Developed new skills or increased expertise in an established area
Lastly, in nearly all of my activities in the course of completing CAS, I developed new stills or increased my expertise in some way or another, whether it was learning how better to work with other people or more specific skills such as the first aid techniques, by completing this learning outcome, and by extension CAS as a whole, I was able to learn things that I would have not done otherwise. CAS not only has allowed me to increase my expertise in newly established areas such as First Aid or golf, but also in areas I established long ago, such as flute and violin. Sometimes I even developed skills outside of the activities that I never planned, such as learning how to run a blog!

-Rebecca