CAS Essay

cas-essay-collage

When I think of my CAS experience over these two years, he first activity that comes to my mind is Visual Arts, because without the compulsion and encouragement that a programme like CAS creates, I would never have taken such a big step outside my comfort zone. Through CAS, I have been able to rekindle my passion for sketching and painting, work on my fine motor skills and my patience. When I am sitting in the VA Room with music playing in the background, and slowly painting away delicate flowers on a thin muslin cloth, the problems of the classroom seem really far away.

Therefore, more than anything else, CAS has taught me the importance of being BALANCED. In my pursuit of meeting the prescribed CAS points, I feel I have become a fitter, more creative and more CARING individual. CAS has also made me more OPEN-MINDED, and willing to TAKE RISKS. For instance, previously, I would never even think of participating in SUO or going for a tree plantation drive early morning on a weekend. But after these experiences, my worldview seems to have expanded as I am able to look past the ‘effort’ factor and look to the ‘reward’ factor of activities.

These experiences have therefore taught me that even though I may not have total mastery in all the activities that I undertook, I should continue trying to learn new things to expand my horizons. I say this because although CAS is not academic, it has definitely been an extremely educational experience: my CAS project (FSMUN), has taught me the importance of being patient, tolerant and being a better team player; my participation in Tennis and Football has taught me the importance of hard work and perseverance; my participation in MUNs and debates has taught me the importance of creative problem solving.

I am also happy that my participation in CAS activities has been able to benefit others around me – as I mentored students to participate in MUNs, went on a tree plantation drive for the betterment of the environment and volunteered for the organisation of various student-led events.

Nothing good comes easy, and I faced significant difficulties in achieving all these positive outcomes. For me, I think the biggest challenge was being perseverant and committed when it came to sport because after a tiring day of school, going out on the field can become very tiring. However, after some initial struggles, as I grew to enjoy the sports that I was playing this difficulty was alleviated.

Moving forward, I think I’m definitely going to use the creativity – action – service formula when planning my schedule to ensure that I have a balanced and principled lifestyle that benefits me and others.

CAS Profile

Hi my name is Manan Shah and I am in grade 12, surviving IB at Fountainhead school. Personally I believe in Carpe-Diem living the life to its fullest as life is short and unpredictable. I am inspired by many characters which appear on television such as Jon Snow. They have inspired me to do the right thing in life and follow my heart. In nature I am an introvert, I think introversion is one of my greatest abilities as it helps me focus on minute details in life and I can introspect and all the small and big matters in life. However this does not mean I do not talk to people, I am quite close to my friends and family.  

My area of talents are sports and learning new things.  I am highly dedicated towards my sport Karate and I constantly keep honing my skills. Also I think Karate has improved my power of concentration which has also helped me academics. Karate constantly creates new challenges for me in ways of competition and learning and developing new skills. The other skill i have is to learn new things. I am always ready and enthusiastic to learn new skills in the my area of interest. Like recently I took up the challenge of learning a new computer language, Python.

Well there are a variety of things which I enjoy. Firstly i love watching movies and tv shows, I can go all day and night watching my favorite tv shows and movies. Also I really like travelling to new places, as I am quite passionate about exploring, as it adds thrill to my life. I like to listen to music and explore different genres in music. I listen to soundtracks created by music composers, they are like symphonies. I also enjoy reading comics I especially love comics by DC Comics as they have my favorite super-heros.

I would like to work on the area of arts as I am not so good at it. I would especially want to sharpen my keyboard skills. Also i would like to develop new skills in visual arts.

I would like to be involved in projects which have more of service components as I want to work for the betterment of the society. Society has given us so much so I would want to repay it in any form.

I am quite optimistic in nature. I think we all have one life so why not live it to its fullest, Carpe Diem. I am also a feeler, so my emotions has more significance in my life. I am also quite punctual, I like to complete all my work before all the deadlines and not procrastinate them.

I think education is one of the most imperative issues in my society, many children do not receive education or quality education. I think this is one of the biggest issues in our society and we need to do something about it.

I would like to learn different computer languages such as C#, Ruby, Pearl, Java and others. As computer is a growing field I think it is important to learn all these languages as they will help me in our near future.

There are couple of things in life I want to try such as adventure activities like bungee jumping, skydiving, cliff jumping, scuba diving and advanced level river rafting.

 

IMG_1498

 

CAS Essay

 

According to me the best CAS activity I have been part of is Fizz. Fizz was founded by my friend and I in order to provide quality education and doubt solving for students in the field of Physics. The hard work and commitment we showed for this activity according to me was commendable. We planned the syllabus we made felicitous notes for the users/students and we used innovative ideas to teach Physics. Not only that we provided a platform where users/students could solve their doubt and also test their knowledge by appearing for a quiz. This is one of the most impressive tasks i have pulled because I successfully balanced my life between my academics, Fizz and other extra curricular activities.

CAS is not just an IB core rather it is a platform where students can explore and learn new things while exploring. During my CAS experience I have learnt a lot of things however the most significant one is that how nature is quite vital in maintaining the natural balance on earth. Also how if you give heartily to nature it will always give you back. This lesson is one of the strongest things I have learnt during CAS activities like Tree plantation at KV college and our winter trip to the enchanted valley of Naggar. I can connect this lesson with the IB learner profile as now I am more reflective about my activities which cause disturbance to nature. Also I have developed the quality of caring for nature as we need to protect it. I have spent a lot of time dwelling inside nature ‘open-mindedly’ which allowed me to gain the ‘knowledge’ about how it functions.

While exploring different fields in CAS I realised that I had good artistic skills where I could draw and sketch art pieces and I believe that i could further use these skills in my future life. Also while doing CAS activities with my friends I have developed skills of working in a synergy also while working a group people tend to have a pessimistic viewpoint however I have realised optimism is more powerful and helpful to maintain human relationships and to achieve certain goals. What I have learnt about others is that everybody is different and unique in their own sense and we need to be open minded about it and accept people the way they are.

In the activity learning camps I had to teach small children, well they are not easy to deal with so i built a lot of composure to tackle them. This has helped me tackle any situation in life with tranquility. The overall CAS experience was smooth but we all have had some had hard times during the entire experience. One of the toughest was managing time. During one of my activities the learning camps i had to stay back at school and teach ICT to the nearby village students. Staying back every day would have hindered my academics so I decided to split up the teaching load so that I had to stay back on some particular days only. My friends helped me to do so.

The most difficult one was the global significance outcome. Well to do an activity which has global impact and significance is difficult as all those activities need high level of determination and commitment. But then I soon realised that small steps towards global awareness is possible, so we arranged learning camps in order to battle the lack of IT education problem.

CAS has been a very beautiful journey for me. I have learnt a lot and in the end I feel eternally happy to give something back to the society. So for these strong moments of happiness and self satisfaction I would love to continue these activities even when I grow up and go for higher level education.

CAS Plan

Timestamp Activity Name Describe the activity which you would like to propose CAS Advisor Activity type Location What are the learning outcomes that will be demonstrated through this activity List the goals related to this activity
9/7/2015 Karate “I am Doing Karate
for 5 years and i am
a black belt but
this time i am
participating in the
school games a
government cometition”
krishna.shethji@fountainheadschools.org Activity Out-of-school Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth, Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills, commitment to and perseverance Go till National level.
3/22/2016 Book Club Book club is an initiative by our school where students have to take part in the activity of reading and develop a habit of it. We need to read a number of book over the year and after reading each book we need to give a reflection to our teachers about the book we read. krishna.shethji@fountainheadschools.org Creativity Out-of-school, In-school Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth, Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills, commitment to and perseverance, Read 5 books of teachers choice over the year
Make nice and insightful presentation
3/22/2016 Learning Python on Codecademy Computers have become an integral part of our lives, now we are literally surrounded by it everywhere and that’s why it is important to learn things about computers. By learning the language Python i am preparing for the future where Computers would be very important part of our life and this will make it easy to learn computers. krishna.shethji@fountainheadschools.org Creativity, Activity Out-of-school Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth, Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills, initiate and plan a CAS experience, commitment to and perseverance Complete the free version of the course
3/22/2016 Debate competition Inter-house competition of debate between two houses. The topic was – Capitol punishment for and against. krishna.shethji@fountainheadschools.org Creativity, Activity In-school Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth, Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills, commitment to and perseverance, Collaboration, engagement with issues of global significance, Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions Try and win the debate competition
enhance public speaking skills
Think of creative arguments
10/1/2016 18:34:20 Tree Plantation @ K.V Central school Planting numerous and different types of tree as KV central school and create an awareness about how nature is important for us to survive and we can conserve nature by best planting trees. krishna.shethji@fountainheadschools.org Service Out-of-school Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth, Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills, commitment to and perseverance, Collaboration, engagement with issues of global significance, Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions We will be focusing on the depleting plants inour society and work on the issue.
Thefizzway Is in an initiative by me where i use the internet to teach physics to people who struggle in the subject. krishna.shethji@fountainheadschools.org Creativity, Service Out-of-school, In-school Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth, Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills, initiate and plan a CAS experience, commitment to and perseverance, Collaboration, engagement with issues of global significance, Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions Upload as many chapters to ensure quality learning for our target audience.
3/10/2017 19:23:21 Learning camps Learning camps is an initiation by me where we where we teach different subjects such as ICT, English and Character Building to the underprivileged children near our school. krishna.shethji@fountainheadschools.org Service In-school Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth, Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills, initiate and plan a CAS experience, commitment to and perseverance, Collaboration, engagement with issues of global significance Create a full proof curriculum for the ICT team.
Make sure that all the classes are fruitful for the children
Try and achieve more attendance of the students.

 

Learning Camps

Access to quality education is a human right yet many are deprived of it. Education is quite vital for human beings because it does not just teach us about how the world works it also provides a path to success. I always wanted to contribute to the society for making it a better place so I thought what better than educating children. “Learning Camp” was an initiation by me and my friends where we taught the underprivileged students near our school different subjects such as English, ICT and character building. During the entire experience we faced a lot of difficulties. The first challenge we faced was how will we approach the underprivileged children because going to each and every house in the village was not a feasible option we decided to keep an introductory session with the parents of the children. The session was organized in the school where we persuaded all the parents to send their children for the camps and we ensured that that these camps would be fruitful for the children as they will learn new skills in different areas. I personally did not expect that the parents would be keen to send their children after long hours of school however it turns out I was wrong the parents were more than happy because they wanted that their children should learn new skills in subject like ICT.

After gathering several volunteers from our school we divided all the volunteers in three groups according to the subject we will teach which were ICT, English and Character Building. I was in charge of the ICT. We began with learning camps. During the time when I taught the children I found out that I had good leadership skills in me because I was able to handle approximately students and could make sure that children would always learn something new and helpful in the field of ICT. Also collaboratively with the other volunteers I designed a four week curriculum for the children which included learning about how internet works, how to create email id’s and some basics about computer programming. During learning camps I was able to learn new skills myself. I was able to learn new Gujarati words and could further improve my Gujarati while constantly communicating with children in the language. One of the biggest challenge during the learning camps was time management, as the learning camps took place after school hours I needed to stay back and because I reached home late I was not able to study so I decided to use some extra time in school such as free slots to ensure that my academics is not affected. Overall learning camps was one of my best experience because I learnt that there is no age for learning.

851519381_2889

 

CAS profile

I am shasvat solanki and I was born on February 18th 1999, in Bharuch, India. As a person I am very joy full and every one likes my company. I love trying new things and having new experiences.
I love playing sports and that is the reason I like football, table tennis, basketball, badminton, chess and many other games but my main sport is football and chess. other sports are like hobbies to me. I just play them for fun. For football and chess I daily practice and I go for competitions for chess and football.
I recently got selected for my chess states for third time. I am as excited as I got selected for the first time but its hard for me to get selected for nationals.chess and football are my talents and I also enjoy playing chess in my free time with friends. Last year I also got selected of Subroto cup and Mahakumbh. In Mahakumbh our team came on third position.
I once tried to get selected for table tennis but it was not my cup of tea.  
As good I am in sports, I am not in Dance, Drama, Music or Arts. That’s why, I would like to improve this skills and I also love doing arts but I don’t know it’s basics. I did drama for two years in school but it did not interest me. I also learned keyboard for two year in school but the same thing happened like drama and it bored me because learning keyboard was a lengthy process and we had very few classes. Sometimes I am not very much patient and that’s the reason why, I easly loss interest in many things. 
I used to go in drawing classes, when I was small and I loved doing. I was not too good in drawing but it was my hobby but I don’t know why I dropped it. Due to CAS I recently did arts and that interest that I had earlier grow. People said try dancing but it did not interest me. As a person I am a introvert that would be a reason, why I did not liked dancing.
I did not have served many service to people or environment but now I would like to be involved in activities which have more service component. After doing CAS I have learned that, what ever you have, you should be happy with it and always look forward for helping and making a change in society , so my outlook on life have changed a lot. I have been more proactive this days. After doing arts for my CAS, I would like to learn more about arts and I feel passionate about it. My dream is to have a clean and Eco-friendly environment but till now I haven’t taken any steps for it. In future I would like to do something about it.
 photo_2016-12-30_02-44-26

CAS essay

When I think about CAS, the first that hits my mind is leaning camps. Which was my CAS project. I never thought that I will initiate something like this and I did not planed also. The project idea just came to me as a dream. I was literally struggling for my project work and I don’t know how but I came across to this project. It was impressive to me because in every service component was being directed or being told what to do but in this activity I had to plan my self the whole activity and I did. I never had a leadership quality but in this activity I developed my leadership skills.

From CAS I have learned that you should come out of your comfort zone and try something new. I never liked arts but for the first time I tried it because of CAS and I just enjoyed it. Being open minded, balance and inquirer will help you explore new things.

What I have learned about me is that I have a good communication skill but I will have to enhance it. While working with others thought this all CAS activities. I have learned about them is that to work with any person you have to be caring, communicator and principled to be compatible and have a good work efficiency. Throughout this CAS activity i became more fit, my behavior was more caring and I became more practical in my life.

Different activities made me balanced person and to others, they were being more open minded and were ready to take any challenge. I was seeing a change in people like they were more cooperative and more talkative. They were becoming more knowledgeable about other different things(out of curriculum). In Bal mela school staff helped me and my friend to manage childerderns, which were coming for the activity(tough of war). There were too many children coming at once for the activity and we were not able to handle, so the staff members of schools helped us.

That most hard learning outcome for me was to plan and initiate an activity and the struggling part was when we had to convince the parents to send their children for learning camps for over learning camps to start but finally parents were convinced and because of them our learning camp was successful.     

    

I would like carry on this learning camps and help other children to acquire more knowledge. To still make this CAS project going on we have already assigned new members, so that the project keeps on going on.

I think from now on I will keep on helping others also after completing my CAS and  making a better place.  It gives me self-satisfaction. I would also like to share my CAS experiences with others and suggest them to start doing service, activity  and creativity.

Football

Football is my passion and I am playing it from the age of 10. Then I got this opportunity at school to play football as my sport, so I started training. This year I trained hard with some goals in mind and I also achieved some of my goals.

While playing football, and learning new things. I got to know about own strengths and weakness. my weakness was that, I was having trouble in passing and I had to improve my skills a bit. This were the areas of growth for me and I made my goals to overcome this weakness. I had a good stamina, I got to know about me.

Going regularly in each and every class was an issue for me. Being a regular player and being committed to football was hard for me. It was like a challenge for me to be regular and because I was most of the time present on the football field, I learned many new skills like long passes, ball control and etc.

Football is a team game and team coordination is must. Trusting your teammates is must and working elaborately is the key to success that I learn from the training. While I train every class with my teammates I started trusted them and my coordination with the team started improving. After being trained for a long time, results of this hard work were being reflected in my game. My skills were improved than before and my long passed also improved.

The ethical implications were that not to wear a watch or any things on hands, which is a football rule and also for safety for others.

I enjoyed and learned many things form this activity. Also, it helped me to be fit and active in my daily life.

CAS Plan

 

Activity Component Duration Learning Outcomes
A day spent with Special children Creativity, Service 12-12-16 to 12-12-16 2,4,6,7
Plantation activity Service, action 24-07-16 to 24-07-16 2,5,6
Trip to Naggar Action 12-26-15 to 1-2-16 1,2,5,6
Anchoring for RWP Creativity, service 4-3-16 to 4-3-16 1,2,4,5,6
WPMUN Creativity 13-09-16 to 14-09-16 1,2,4,5,6
Zumba Fest Creativity, service, action 20-12-16 to 20-12-16 1,2,3,4,5,7
Surat Student Parliament Creativity 13-11-16 to 13-11-16 1,4,5,6
Monologue Competition Creativity 2-08-17 to 2-08-17 1,2,4
Chairing IMUN Creativity, service 2-2-17 to 2-2-17 2,3,5,6

IMUN Chairing

This was my first time chairing a MUN instead of being a delegate. This was much different than my other MUN experiences because I learned how a committee is handled and judged. I was invited to chair the Inferno Model United Nation to chair the United Nations Security Council. It was also great to understand and take in the perspectives of all the delegates. The learning outcomes that I achieved are as follows:

L2 – Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken developing new skills: As a delegate, I only had to research about the particular country assigned to me but as the chair, I had to learn about every country and have a neutral point of view.

L3- initiate and plan a CAS experience: For this event I was a part of the Executive board which automatically made me responsible to make sure that the event was smooth and successful. I tried my best to make sure that all the delegates get a good experience and learn about the world.

L5- Demonstrate skills and benefits of working collaboratively: A lot of the delegates were new and were participating for the first time so as the chair I had the take the responsibility to help them out to progress the committee.

L6-engagement with issues of global significance: The agenda of the committee was to discuss situations that the actual United Nations deal with and propose solutions for the same.

photo_2017-02-22_20-26-30

photo_2017-02-22_20-26-43

1 2 3 24