Category: Ronak Harish Makwana

Hello! I am Ronak Makwana, and I am 17 years old. I was born in Mumbai, Maharashtra and brought up in Surat, Gujarat. I am really passionate for Football, and I am very good at football too.

I have been playing football from grade 4. My elder brother and sister were both great at football. I remember my sister was also a national level player. Football was not valued much in India back then. Then I started playing football at my home, school and probably everywhere. Watching professionals play and learning from them was always fun. There was a time when I was the only one watching football and knowing some of the football players except Ronaldo and Messi. Then slowly and gradually people were slowly taking interest in football. I went for so many football tournaments, I have played in state level and national level too. We had the best team in Gujarat.

Then to pursue IBDP, I came to Fountainhead school. Still I am interested in football, but there is another sport added to favourites sports too and that was kickboxing, when I joined this school, it had been a year since I joined kickboxing classes. After the first month of school, I got an amazing opportunity to go for Kickboxing at national level. The competition was in Pune, and with my efforts, I won a gold medal.

After joining Fountainhead, my life has changed, really. Academically it has gone worse, but enjoying life has become way better than best. I joined fountainhead last year, but there is so much that I have learnt in this school, this school has given me one of the most awesome moments in my entire life.

I am 17 years old and I still think, according to the things I do at this age I am still 10 years old. LOL

These two years of diploma were amazing, with a lot of CAS activities, including physical activities and others. I have done a lot CAS activities this as well as last year, but the best activity that I have ever done is football, I have been passionate for football since I was 8 years old. Also, I have learnt a lot of things this academic year, especially football. Football was the sport that i chose as my physical sport.

I have learnt a lot from CAS, as it is the only thing, where we don’t have to study and its more physical, or where we don’t have so much stress. We have a lot of requirements for CAS, that’s what makes us do a lot of work for CAS and learn a lot of things from it. We have seven learning outcomes in CAS, and that is how we learn things. CAS teaches us to take risks, because when we organize an event, there is no guarantee of it being successful, and sometimes we have to risk money as well. We have CAS reflections, where we reflect about our CAS activity experience, it contains evaluating their skills and identifying their strengths and weaknesses. It makes us good communicators as well, because we need to communicate to people, if we want our CAS project to be popular. Basically IB learner profile links to the learning objectives, CAS and CAS reflections.

I have identified a lot of strengths and weaknesses in a lot of fields. CAS helps us to explore all the aspects of different activities, except studies, but other fields as well. I also came to know how others deal with their problems, and others’ weaknesses and strengths as well, because they had CAS too. I had never organised an event or anything else, so that was a really big challenge for me. I was very shy and was not good at communicating with people.

Different activities helped us to explore different aspects of CAS, and we explored our abilities through it, one my classmate had never organized anything, she organised an event and identified her strength and now that is her future career. I have had a lot of difficulties during CAS. First of all, in the beginning i didn’t know the types of activities I am supposed to do. We were asked to list down all the activities that we could do, I didn’t write any, so it was difficult to think about new activities. Then I had difficulties in writing all the CAS reflections as well, they need a lot of evidences and a very nice presentation of your experience of the CAS activity. We have CAS advisors, who helped me and my fellow classmates, they were the ones who were supposed to check our CAS reflections and look after all the activities done by the student. Also, they would help us with project work, by giving suggestions and supervising the project.

Learning outcome 6 was the most difficult learning outcome to achieve for me. This learning outcome says that “Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance”. Not all activities have global significance and most of the activities are related to my country. It was really hard to find an evidence and explain it for learning outcome 6, but then i started thinking about the most common things I do, like playing football and wrote about the global significance, which was correct.

My CAS experience has been really great and I would like to continue this kinds of activities, which could help others. CAS really helps us to think beyond studies and makes all of us helpful to each other, which will continue and make world a better place. CAS experience has been great this year, and I will miss all the fun I had during these activities.

Proposed Activities	Components (C/A/S)	Duration with start date and end date	Learning Outcomes
U-17 Subroto cup	Activity	15 July 2015 to 15 July 2015	LO1,LO2,LO5,LO7
Kick Boxing Tournament	Activity,Creativity	19 June 2015 to 21 June 2015	LO1,LO2,LO7
Teaching Chemistry	Activity,Service,Creativity	17 September	LO1,LO2,LO5,LO7
Naggar Trip	Activity,Creativity	21 December 2015 to 3 January 2016	LO1,LO2,LO3,LO5,LO7
Football	Activity,Creativity	2015-16	LO1,LO2,LO4,LO5,LO6,LO7
Mahakumbh	Activity,Creativity	3 March 2016	LO1,LO2,LO4,LO5,LO7
Tree Plantation KV central school	Activity,Service	3 July 2016	LO2,LO4,LO5
Organ Donation Street Play	Activity, Creativity,Service	17 July 2016 to 30 July 2016	LO1,LO4,LO5,LO6
French Assembly	Activity, Creativity	18 February 2016	LO1,LO2,LO4,LO5
Leg Tennis Tournament	Activity, Creativity	17 November to 20 December	LO1, LO2, LO3, LO4, LO5

Proposal: During the playtime slots, our grade plays various games, Leg-Tennis is one of them. After witnessing the growing interest and the increase in the bond between the classmates due of this game, my friend and I using our creativity and collaboration, came with the idea of organizing a Leg Tennis tournament. It is a unique game and is something which has never been played in the FS. After discussing the idea with the authority the idea was finalized, which referred to the two strands creativity and action.

Planning stage: The planning started with taking a poll of the people who would like to participate and a lot of people showed interest. Later on, we prepared a google form and recorded the responses of the participants. Using the word of mouth technique we had spread the news of the tournament across the school.

s.

and the responses were good which can be seen below.

As seen in the above images, majority of people wanted to participate in the event. After getting responses we decided to make the arrangements of the tournament. For example, deciding the rules for the game (as it was our creation), we needed a huge place as lot of people wanted to participate, etc. Deciding on a place was proving to be trouble for us. We needed a wide space, which was not available in school, and doing it outside school was expensive, hence that was not a feasible option (as we didn’t have enough funds). To overcome this limitation, we decided to put a restriction, that only our grade students can participate, as this game was something that illustrated our bond and coordination amongst us. We all used to play Leg Tennis together and we had to be fair to them. We had to also decide on the dates of the tournament. Prioritizing the work is important, as habit four suggests ‘put first things first’, both of us had our submissions and deadlines coming up.  We were facing a clash of the dates, but we had to find a ‘win-win’ solution, therefore, we finalized dates that were between the days of our submissions.

After taking a call on everything and doing the planning, we made a poster to finally make an official announcement of the tournament. I was a proud moment for us. The poster were stuck on various public gathering places in our school, like the dining area, library, etc.

Execution: The D-day was here. We were very nervous, yet seeing the enthusiasm in participants made me feel excited. Now one of the most important thing was to collect players in a very short period of time. However, with our collaboration and commitment we were able to overcome this problem by requesting a Grade 12 students to participate in the tournament, changing the teams and deciding a suitable location for the tournament. We were not able to get any official referee for this game, because Zoheb and I were the only ones who knew this game well, which is why we took this initiative to be referees too. We decided that no one will be biased. Maintaining the decorum during the event and being calm under these situation was necessary for me, being a leader and a manager. My take from this event was to arrange everything properly, we did not share proper forms and did not take interviews and there was lack of planning for the location and participants. So more planning will surely help any event to be more successful.

Overall, it was a fun experience, that helped me grow as a person, and improve my leadership skill. During the tournament I made some experiences that will stay with me for a long time.

 

U-turn is an event, which is held every weekend at different places. This act was prepared in a very short period of time. We planned an act and the shared the entire script with everyone. We never practiced it with everyone.

The acting was a big challenge for all of us, we had never acted in public. The most difficult challenge was to act seriously, which quite hard when you are with your friends at 7 o’ clock in the morning. Also, the message we were trying to give to the audience and make them believe about the current situation was really difficult.

We had not planned it really well, but we planned our script pretty well, as far as acting is concerned, we were confident about our acting skills in the beginning, but then we understood the real challenge was acting. This was a serious act and we were split into the ones, who are going to act and others are going to be the voiceover.

I am scared to act in front of people or present anything in the front of people, especially this is the time the audience was not even known, there is a road, where people walk and they see everyone performing.

This act was made by us and performed by the same people, which made it quite easy, because everyone knew, what they were supposed to do and how they were supposed to act.

We were spreading awareness about the organ donation, with the help of this act and all the information we gave about the organ donation. Well, we were not supposed to read our scripts and act, and we had to perform this act for at least 5 times due to different batches of the audience. So the first time we acted with the scripts, but after that, we were confident and acted better and better.

At the end, the act was quite successful and one of the people in the audience recorded our act.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIKxnKFuJx4

According to me teaching is the most difficult job that you can ever have. I always think, that why do people love teaching. So, actually Aarsh and I were given a topic, which we had to teach to the entire chemistry class. This was done because many students were absent, when Aarsh and I were present, so for our revision and teaching other students, we had this teaching activity.

I was actually scared for this teaching session, I had no personal experience of teaching, but later when I started teaching I got to know that sharing knowledge is actually fun. It was really a big challenge, because I am not academically as smart as others students are. The main challenge was to answer the questions asked by our classmates. They have their different ways to perceive knowledge, which arose different questions. I discovered that I have a good board work.

I spent half a day at home to actually plan the entire chemistry class. It was really planned well by Aarsh and I. It was really difficult handle most of the students, as they had many questions. Answering questions was really difficult, but we tried our best and gave answers and to the questions that were out of topic, we asked them to ask it to the chemistry teachers.

Aarsh and I planned out the entire chemistry class together and taught together, so that each person gets a specific amount of time, to prepare for another lecture. It was successful. We followed the entire teaching method, with the introduction and conclusion. So we did not skip anything and it was a good revision for us and a good lesson for our classmates.

This was my first CAS plantation activity, it was held year too. This activity needed a lot of physical strength. It was july and it was raining heavily. We had to come by our own transport. We all were given instructions by the supervisor.

This activity took place in rainy season, so we had to wear raincoats. It was a really messy situation.

The main challenge was not to get dirty and plant the tree without ruining the soil. Using all the tools appropriately. It was really difficult to manage the electronic devices, that we brought to click pictures.

I had never planted a tree in my life, so it was a big challenge for me, and I had many difficulties in reaching to the place, but the time I reached, I started planting trees and helping others. It was really hard work, but I signed up for it and did it.

Even planting need working collaboratively. There were two people per tree, so they worked together to grow a plant.

It is really unethical to cut the trees and this is why we took this initiative to plant the trees. This was a really interesting CAS experience, where we were not supervised by any school teachers, after planting we all went for breakfast.

Second football competition “Khel Mahakumbh”. Now I knew each and everyone in my new school, especially football players. This was the second football tournament which happens only in Gujarat. This one of the most popular football cup and I have always tried to win it I could never win it as my team was not up to the level. This time I was confident as there three coaches in the playing 11 so our team had good defence. This time I was playing in the left wing mid position which was one of my favourite positions to play. I was hoping to win this game, but I never thought that i would actually win this tournament. I got an injury because of my football boots. Then I just stopped playing as it was burning a lot even I was walking. Through my body language our coach/team captain smartly substituted me with a defender and sent a player to my position. I took rest for the whole match.

Slots for this tournament were given as we were given in the subroto cup. This time we had more slots in our hand so we practiced every aspect of football. This time the ethical issues were not there as we were in the open category, which meant that anyone could play in the tournament, but now the issue arose was are the players from the same school that they are playing for, Identity cards were checked by the coaches and one of the team was discarded too. I had my new studs on and I was not too comfortable with them, which was one major distraction for me while playing football, but then I focused more the football and kept in running every time, so that I get used to it.

Finally we won the entire tournament and our team got 50,000 rupees along with the championship trophy. We all got equal amount from the price won.The winning team also gets to go the state levels but at the end we had to cancel it as twelfth grade students were busy with their final submissions.

Eat, Sleep, Play Football

This was my daily routine. I am really passionate about football. It’s really difficult to imagine a week without playing football. This is the only sport that I can play “anywhere” at “anytime” and the most important thing with “anything”. I believe that the most important thing in sports is     DDD- Dedication, Discipline and Determination. I also that sports has taught me to be humble. When I was in 10th grade, I had the final examinations after a week and I was so depressed, that I almost gave up and I didn’t want to give the examinations, but it was the athlete in me that gave me the strength.

I came to know a lot of weaknesses as well as strengths. I felt really good that I came to know all my strengths and weaknesses, because I got to learn a lot from the mistakes that I made. I had a weakness of not passing the ball or just playing solo, which to leads to my strength that I have really good skills, which helps me to score a lot of goals for my team, but sometimes it doesn’t work. It is really important to know the weaknesses and strengths, because after that you know the things on which you need to work on and the ones you need to enhance.

I always think that football was really challenging, but it is not anymore, but it always used to prove me wrong. I always try to learn new skills and try to control football in the best way possible. I have a really nice habit to overcome my weaknesses or challenges by just practicing and practising.

Football is all about the teamwork. Working collaboratively is one of the key components in football. I was really bad with passing and teamwork, I learnt this skills from all the PS classes.

We played all the matches according to the rules, which are followed worldwide and all the training sessions, drills,etc.

 

Naggar had some of the finest moments of my school life. Winter trip which was one of the most popular topics to talk before December. We debated a lot on the winter trip and finally ended up choosing Naggar. There were just a few people who registered for the winter trip and even fewer paid for it. After that many people decided to go there and 85% of the grade was in the trip. The trip was really awesome as it was the first time I was going with my new friends. We all had to travel for two days, which was exhausting, but we enjoyed by playing different games in the bus and train. I lost my shoes in the train, and it was snowing in Naggar. I was really tensed about the trip as I didn’t have extra pair shoes, the only thing I had were my flip-flops. We reached Naggar and had our dinner, saw our rooms. We all gathered  in a room to watch a TV show known as “Bigg Boss”, which was one of the most liked show in the entire grade. I came to know many weaknesses and strengths about myself that I was good at trekking and walking, but I was very careless, I lost many things during the trip including the expensive stuff like iPod. It was really difficult to trek without shoes but I somehow managed to borrow crocs which helped me a little. The most surprising thing was a television in each room. We were in a village and we had televisions in each room which was quite surprising. We did skiing too, it was fun and did two treks a day.

My strengths and weakness were identified by me and others when we went for our first trek, I was the last to student to start as I woke up very late, which was one of my weaknesses. I started trekking and slowly and gradually I was getting bored, so I started walking really fast and reached to the person who was the first one to start and was almost 1 kilometre further from the others, and then I found out that I was not so tired, it was just normal. I continued walking with him and discovered that I am a very good trekker. Also I lost many things during the trip, which shows that I am a careless person, yes I am. I feel so good that I have strengths that I didn’t even knew, and I keep in improving my weaknesses. We supported each other while trekking and helped the people if they need any. We had different competitions or games in which we used team work to win. The most important thing I learnt was clothing I always used to learn clothing sense from my friends and used to take inspiration for my next outfit. We used many tactics to avoid the cold weather, from which some of them really work very nicely, that were also the skills I learnt. This journey had the longest travelling for almost all the students and teachers, but we still went for the trip and we enjoyed the entire trip instead of hating it.

We all had a lot of fun. I came to know the people in my class and how they behave. Had an awesome experience and the new celebrated with classmates is always good.