ISA Fest

My friends and I participated in the French Fest which took place in International School Aamby (ISA), Amby Valley. This fest was a competition between various schools from all over India. My personal involvement in this fest was to collect data and make the presentation. I was expected to complete my research on time and update the team on time. This helped me with punctuality issues which I often struggled with. However, ISA made me realize that there is no excuse for lateness and everything I do should be on time otherwise the entire team will be at a loss. French as a subject is difficult for understanding and it had been only 7 months since we started  learning the language. This fest in whole was a very difficult task to prepare and present, but we undertook this challenge. Every school which participated in the fest were well organized and prepared for each and every activity. This really scared me because we were very less prepared against the other schools in the activity. Before the fest actually took place i used to think that the fest will be extremely easy and there will be a max of 1 or 2 school participating, to a max of 10-15 students, which will make us winning very easy.

During the fest I felt very excited about meeting students from different schools and cities and on the other hand I also felt scared because of the tight competition we will have to face during the fest. In this fest I perceived the difficulty that the students face when they have to manage an event such as this and the level of preparation they need to do before hand to entertain and inform the students and teacher from different schools.

I had hoped that I will learn many things from participating in this activity such as, understanding the language, the type of activities which can be organized for a language fest and the problems and difficulties faced by students in managing such a fest. There were times I felt that I was finding myself to be out of my comfort zone, like I prefer not to dance / participate in group activities, but I did things out of my comfort zone which made me feel very thrilled and glad.

After participating in this fest I discovered that my personal strengths are to adapt to different situations and to change my plans on the last moment successfully. The area that I need to improve is controlling mass students when I am supposed to do an activity. This fest overall was full of enjoyment for me and the others, there were many fun activities organized by the school to keep us entertaining constantly.

Teamwork and leadership was the key for our great success in the fest. It was because we work collaboratively with each other that time in ISA was fun all the time. There were competitions such the “presentation of stall” which would have been a debacle – in which we were suppose to decorate stalls and present a particular country. We also kept the ethical considerations in mind, we did not cheat at all or break and of the fest’s rule. “Win or lose, we will not cheat” was our moto in the fest.. I later on understood that, in this project I have wasted alot of resources such as paint, paper and chart paper even after many warning from ma’am, we kept on continuing with our project and wasting resources. I also think that the resources that we wasted could have been reused by other students to complete their activities. Earlier I could not easily work collaboratively with others but after doing so many group activity, I could easily work collaboratively with my team in ISA and enjoy it at most. Also, we we had not shown our commitment and perseverance in this activity we could not have achieved such good comments from the examiners and at most we could not have even completed the activity. Overall my experience in this fest was stupendous!

 

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Trip to Naggar

My trip to Naggar was the first trek in my life, and overall experience was terrific. Well, we did face a lot of challenges in this trip, such as the cold weather with thin air high mountain climbs which were kinda dangerous and much more, but if I keep all the problem/difficulties aside my experience in Naggar was marvelous. My initial thought for this trip was that

a)It will be very challenging – the weather conditions

b)The treks will be very dangerous

c)We had to travel on the bus for 15 hours continuously which will be extremely tiring, but the fact is all of my paradigms were proved wrong. Even in the bus, we did entertain you and the teacher did help keep busy by making us play different activities on the bus.

In Naggar, I participated in mainly all the activities except one, ‘the storytelling’ because I found it boring. I participated in all the physical activity even though we were given the choice of backing off and relax in our rooms because I knew, that the reason I came to this place was not only to enjoy with my friends but also to explore a new place. I made a lot new friends on this trip, maybe because I was able to open up that talk to everyone openly which I am not able to do in school. In the  trip, we helped each other in cleaning our rooms, in the trek and by keeping each other busy all time. In this trip I was able to make a friend circle, which I would adore for life. I also learned many things from this trip – the culture of people living in the Northern suburbs of India, the unique art of specific villages by visiting the galleries there. The visits were awesome. We were also instructed to take special care of nature as we were shocked seeing the amount of garbage and dirt in the city. We also learned that we should start to work on preserving the nature than polluting it – this was the ethical concern and global significance we noticed on this trip. In my previous trips with my family and friends I had a habit of polluting the environment around, by throwing garbage on the road, but on this trip – I made an aim that I will not pollute the environment, especially by throwing garbage on roads. This aim was proving to become a lot difficult for me initially, but after showing some commitment and perseverance, I was able to achieve this aim of mine. The trip overall was terrific and I would have regretted the decision of not being a part of this trip.    

 

 

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French Cooking

I and the other french students had planned a french cooking fest, in which we had to cook french food. This activity proved to be a tad bit (aka a lot) challenging as managing so many students in the school kitchen, where half of them don’t know how to cook or where the utensils and ingredients were kept.

During the planning, we first thought to only keep this activity between us french students, however I felt with such few students (we were only six french students), this activity will not be fun and we will not get many dishes to explore. Then we decided to invite the hindi students as well. So, each person took four to five hindi students to help us. I personally feel that I am lacking certain leadership qualities, including managing people and allocating work. This made me nervous and apprehensive as I thought thought I would screw up this activity for myself and others, but I undertook this challenge as an opportunity to improve my leaderships skills. Cooking wasn’t my expertise either. They have gotten me into some deep trouble, thus I participated a lot in this activity so I could cook something good for that day and to improve them for the days to come. On the day of the activity, we were told that the students without pants would not be allowed to participate in this activity.

After hearing this announcement, I was horribly shaken as my whole team (excluding me of course) was wearing shorts. I was feeling terrified, because I felt that I would fail without my team. I also felt that if I would mess things up, the school might not do this activity again.. I knew I was dramatization, but at that time I was seriously panicked. However, I decided to accept this challenge with a smile. Ignoring the difficulties I will have to face in future, I teamed up with Khushi Shah at the last moment and started to cook my chosen dish, which was ‘Apricot French Toast’. During the activity, I realized that I had forgotten to order the primary ingredient – milk. I was hyperventilating inside, but I pretended to be calm while scanning the kitchen for some milk. I searched up and down, left and right, high and low,  when I finally found a pack of soy milk. I didn’t actually know how to use it, but I did anyways. The amount of commitment and perseverance I need in this activity was very high, because there were many on the point changes which was considerably very shocking and difficult. 

In course of the activity, I did keep in mind the ethical considerations and the school policies while making my dish as instead of using eggs, which is against the school policies, I used unsweetened or unsalted butter. I didn’t spoil other people dishe or cheated while making mine, hence being ethical. After a lot of hard work, my dish was ready and everybody loved it. Currently, I believe that my cooking skills have developed, however my leadership qualities couldn’t be put on show as I had to work in a pair in the end.


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Visual Arts

Visual Arts is a place where I can really use all of my creativity to create something new, such as a portrait, painting or another form of arts. My Visual Arts classes are conducted by Mr.Rahul Popaniya and Miss.Pankti Chauhan once a cycle. There are many forms of activities we were explored to by the help our teachers such as woodcut, pottery, painting and installations.

Drawing and painting have always been my area of weakness, because a) I never found it interesting b) I always lacked the skill of the art. I think my interest in arts have gradually increased after I joint Visual Arts. Our teachers made the class very lively and entertaining which made me more keen to understand/explore arts. I think after exploring many forms of arts in the span of one year, I have developed a new skill of drawing and basic pottery making. The woodcut was an activity that I was completely unfamiliar of, it sounded very easy when sir first introduced it to me, but when I actually started performing the activity I understood the difficulties and hardship the activity needed. For this activity I had to be dedicated and creative to complete the activity, also to complete the activity in the time span sir gave me, I had to work on it regularly for an hour at minimum, which was initially becoming strenuous.

For me the hardest form of art was “installation”, it is really very complicated and tiring, we needed to do many things beforehand which was a really headache; and after that we had to organize all the material, paint the blocks and all. The hardest part of the entire activity was creating a pattern of all the blocks, this was really very dense, because everybody in the team had different opinions and comments, which really made the atmosphere very annoying and disappointing, thus after a lot of argument between the team I came up with an idea of dividing the entire team into 3 groups, one group will arrange the top, one will arrange the middle and the other will arrange the bottom – each group had 2 students in it. I think this idea worked out pretty well, as after this distribution there was no more argument between the team.
This project itself carries a very important message for global importance – “Cycle of life”. We have decided to base our project on the idea of the ideal life every student must have. We have used the 3 primary colors – red, blue and yellow – and also white and black. These colors help represent the ideal conditions of an ideal life a student must focus to achieve. Every color has a different meaning in its context; for example, the color “yellow” represents youth, fun, happiness, the sunshine and other light playful feelings. It is a cheerful energetic color. We noticed that mainly all the students in the school were living a life they weren’t happy of, thus we decided to create this installation to symbolize the various qualities a student should have to live a happy and peaceful life. In this activity, we also came up with an ethical issue that should plagiarize or not. After a lot of internal discussions, we came to a conclusion that we should be academically honest and complete this project independently with only the help of our teacher. I later on understood that, in this project I have wasted alot of resources such as paint, paper and paint brushes even after many warning from sir, we kept on continuing with our project and wasting resources. I also think that the resources that we wasted could have been reused by other students to complete their activities or the we could have donated them to other children so that even they could enjoy art.

I really think I made the correct decision of participating in this activity because there were so many things that I learned; the different forms of art, skills of drawing and also how to undertake new challenges in arts. This activity was very effective and I think whatever I have learned in the span of a year, will help me in my future. This activity was very valuable to me because now I am able to build up an era of interest in arts which I couldn’t do in my past.
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Activity 6: Secretary General at FSMUN 2.0 | Service, Creativity

Objective

The objective of organizing a Model United Nations conference in the school was very simple: to raise awareness about global issue among the student community. I had noticed that there was a lack of basic global awareness in my peer group, and as someone who is aggressively interested in knowing what’s going on in the world around me, I took it upon myself to set that right. An MUN conference seemed like the correct choice to do this because I am an active participant in MUN conferences and I have found that they really help me improve my general knowledge, interpersonal skills and ability to think critically. FSMUN 2.0 gave me the chance to therefore work with and on the skills that I had as a MUNner and event coordinator to put together an event that would be enjoyable and educational for all involved

Planning

Since we started planning for the FSMUN, we were very clear about one thing: we wanted FSMUN to be a quality MUN. right from the agendas and executive board to food and utilities. Although we had a limited number of delegates and therefore a limited budget, we tried to do our best to make sure that we were able to provide everyone present with top-notch service. This is one of the things that we learnt from doing the MUN last year: do little, but do it well.

Although I was the Secretary General and my role was primarily overseeing the content side of the event, I became pretty involved in the organisation of it too. Organizing the event, working with several different departments, delegates from other schools, a diverse executive board and the school management taught me important lessons about keeping my cool, delegating work and working collaboratively with others. In the time leading up to the event I was able to figure out who was capable of doing what work how well and I tried to play on the department heads’ strengths.

I also worked with the supervising teacher, Ayman ma’am, to come up with creative yet workable agendas for each of the six committees to discuss. This involved a significant amount of research and creativity and greatly helped me engage with issues of global significance. Even for planning and executing crisis breaks in the committees, I had to constantly keep myself updated about the news leading up to the event.

I started working towards the FSMUN about 3 to 4 months prior to the event and almost every day I had some or the other crisis to deal with. Planning such a large scale event while juggling SATs, IB Exams and other extracurricular was not easy to do, and I think my hard work and time management really paid off when I saw the positive feedback from people involved in the event. There was a time during the planning stage when we just did not have enough delegates to make the event work and I was thinking of giving up and cancelling the event, but with the support from my peers and supervisors, I persevered and made sure that although we had few delegates, we had a successful event.

Execution

After about 3 months of frantic planning, when the event finally came upon us, I made sure that every minute detail that could be taken care of was taken care of. Obviously, there were some really scary mishaps that happened, like the school’s chef bailing on us the last minute, but I think all of that added towards making this event a great organisational experience. During the two days of the conference, I ran around so much, moving from committee to committee making sure things were right that I feel the need to mark this CAS project as “activity” along with creativity and service! But the running around paid off because I was personally able to take care of a a lot of the crises which I assume left our guests with a positive impression. Sometimes though I had to be tough on the EB, OC and delegates because there was just too much sloppiness in the event and the balance that I was required to have between being helpful and being though was really a life lesson.

Like any other MUN, FSMUN helped me meet new people and make new friends. Planning and executing the event also made me better friends with the people I see every day because when I was working with them, we were kind of all on the same team and a sense of camaraderie developed within the OC.

Final take away

My biggest take-away from organizing and executing the event  are:

  1. Being patient: because panicking does not help.
  2. Micromanagement works for me.
  3. People know what their job is and how to do it; they’re just tardy, not clueless.
  4. If you don’t work hard, thing won’t work out.
  5. You cannot do everything alone.

Evidence

Click here to view the after movie of FSMUN 2.0

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The difference between dancing with the feet and dancing with the heart!

 

Flash mob – Education for all

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To promote the goal 2 ‘Achieve universal primary education’ of the UN millennium development goals, the group ‘A step towards human (ASTH)’ was doing a flash mob in a very renowned mall of the city. To spread awareness on a topic like ‘Education’ (which plays a very significant role and is an important issue all around the globe) they decided to present it in a creative manner, because the audience is always attracted towards art. The flash mob started with a dance followed by a speech, then a drama and at last again a dance.

The preparations were going on from weeks, everyday the rigorous dance practices were held. It was difficult for me to attend all the practices, but because of my commitment I had to manage my time. I had to put in extra efforts, because I am not that good at dancing. I developed my dancing skills in the process. We were all confident and were thorough with our dance on the last day. Along with excitement, I was very nervous. After a long time, I was going to perform in front of a huge audience. During the time of our performance there was a large audience waiting for us. My Mother and my sister were also there to encourage me. Just as the music started, we all were dancing on our tunes, but due to lack of space we were all banging into each other. I was proud of myself because I didn’t forget any step in the middle of the performance, and that I gave my best to make it successful.

The limitations were that were was a problem in the sound system. People were not able to hear our speech and the music too. This was a big led down for the whole group. Though we were able to generate some amount to fund, it didn’t meet upto our expectations.
Out of the six thinking hats, the green hat which is about creativity and the red hat which talks about feelings played an important role in this particular activity. Without creativity it was impossible for us to persuade people, and as our motto was to spread awareness and raise fund, we were dealing with human emotions and therefore considering feelings was necessary. Ethical aspect of the activity was related to the usage of the fund, and the goal of education itself. How justified is it to have differences in something as universal as education?

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Book Club

Book club is an initiative of our school, Fountainhead. Book club is an activity where a student has to read a number of books in a year. Its aim is to promote the good habit of reading. Initially I never liked reading books, I used to loathe reading books but this year I participated in the book club and aimed to read at least five books of my choice. When I was about to start with my first book, my english teacher asked me “are you up for a challenge ?”, I asked “what is the challenge about” she replied that “this year you should read 10 books of your choice” I thought about it, it was a new challenge as I had to read 10 books with the burden of IAs and other school work. However this was an opportunity to step out of my comfort zone and do something which is challenging, so I said “Yes”. With this I read the my choice of books. In the initial stages I read my books on daily bases as I had a lot of free time and I wanted to use it productively, While reading I used to sit with my phone in which I used the dictionary to understand the book as much as possible. I was committed doing this until I had my karate tournament, and that time I had a lot of burden upon me so I wasn’t able to continue the determination after that. Some of the books I read were hard such as “A game of thrones” and some of them were light reads such as “Paper Towns”. To provide an evidence that we actually read the book I had to write book tweets which were like reflections about the book or have a viva with my teacher where she asked me about the book. So this year’s book club was an amazing experience where I explored how reading is my new strength also explored different genres and author’s books and it was also a big achievement coming from a non reader background. However I was not able complete 10 books because I also had my Karate national tournament even though I managed to complete five books and ma’am approved it for book club criteria.

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Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye! ~Dorothy Parker

Literary Fest – Ads to add up

A literary fest was organized in our school. Out of the many activities which were designed, I choose to take part in an activity called ‘Ads to add up’. I aimed to learn the conventions of an advertisement in a non-conventional manner. The whole process of this activity was fascinating. We were divided into groups and then we were asked to design an advertisement of a product and present it in an exclusive way.  IMG_5457

In our group, students ranged from grade 7 to grade 11 were there. Cooperation and Stephen Covey’s 5th habit ‘seek first to understand, then to be understood’ played a role to smooth our group work. Limitations which we were facing were, that there were too many people in one group, therefore considering each one’s perspective and opinion was a difficult task. It was creating a chaos. Also we had ideas but executing them appropriately was a barrier. Students from lower grade had only little clue about the format and the conventions of an advertisement, explaining them everything and then completing the task in the given time period was not possible. Due to time constrain the quality of our presentation suffered. Ethics played a role where we didn’t cheat or plagiarized another group’s idea. The activity was competitive in nature as we were all fighting for our house points.

We could relate this activity to our subjects like language, business management and visual arts. The methods used to create an advertisement and the format of an advertisement is something which we learn in our visual arts class. For example, the layout, visual appeal, font size, colours, etc.

In business management we are taught about the forms, the audience, the market of the product, etc. The purpose, the analysis, the impact, the conventions, the type and all the other things related to an advertisement is directed to us in our language class.

The activity was both informative as well as creative. I will remember the way people presented in a humorous way. This also taught us, by the way people sitting there responded that what are the things which audiences find attractive and interesting in an advertisement. Overall, it was a creative approach to an educative activity, which was appreciated.

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The unexpected benefits of planting a tree!

We were taken to Janki Van- a new botanical garden which is being developed by Ministry of Forest (Gujarat) under the guidance of Head of Forest Department. This was our first trip, I was filled with excitement. We were going to help the workers in planting saplings of ‘Mehendi’. All these years we have been studying about global warming and deforestation, but today was the time when we were actually going to fulfil our responsibility towards   nature. It was a new experience and I felt a positive vibe that day. The variety of plants in the garden, with different colours, provide a dazzling view of the place. All the goals that were made for this activity were attained.

The following were the goals:

  • Learn techniques and acquire knowledge about plantation.
  • Learn new skills and experience a day of a worker’s life.
  • Start acting responsibly towards nature.

We learnt the technique of planting the saplings. The process was simple, but required proper focus to neatly plant them. Though the whole activity was a smooth process, it was a challenging task. I had to come out of my comfort zone and do the labour intensive work. It required a lot of hard work and was a very tiring exercise. From morning till the evening we were on the field, under the hot burning sun. I  made a commitment for the service and acted to make a positive difference in the world around us.

Doing teamwork was essential for this particular activity. My friends and I coordinated with each other to do the work assigned to us. We distributed the work, so that no one had to bare much pressure. We helped each other in carrying the heavy utensils. Cooperation between the group was maintained by doing effective communication with our groups members, as well as with the workers (as we had to take their guidance for completing our task fitly).

The limitations that I faced were regarding my lack of knowledge in this task, as well as not being physically too fit was a barrier. I was not aware with the technical way of using the equipments and therefore I was finding it difficult to use them in a correct way. Secondly, I am not physically that fit, so carrying the heavy utensils was a very tedious duty. It was an amazing experience and the activity worked as a stress buster for me.

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Process: Filling the vessel with the small plants, carrying them to the designated area, planting them and then watering the plants.

Reflection 2: Kick Boxing Tournament

Kickboxing is the only martial art that I have learnt till date. I went to pune with my brothers and it was the first time, my brothers ever participated in a national tournament. We reached pune at 4 in the in the morning and we were all exhausted. I went to my room and jumped on my bed. Watching others fighting and fighting with different opponent was an ultimate feeling. I came to know many things from this tournament I didn’t know that there were three categories in kickboxing or any kind of martial art. I was in the light contact category as it was too for me to participate in the full contact match. That was the day when I had my 6 months training. It was very boring for me initially coming to classes just doing some punches and kicks. Fighting with each other was not at all fun. This tournament was a very big challenge for me as I was not very good at fighting. This activity was a great opportunity as I had never gone for national level for this kind of sport. I did learn almost all the types of kicks and punches. I mastered a trick known as back fist, I used to do it every time in the fights and every time I do anything related to it. The tournament itself was a big challenge to me as I had not gone for any district level or state level matches before. I was obviously aiming to win the tournament but I was sure that I will not win the tournament and will not win any matches either. The most difficult thing was to fight against an opponent, because I had create a little anger on the opponent, which could help me.

We did a lot of practice at our hotels and woke the first three days for our match but it was then postponed to the fourth day. We all won the first match then me and elder brother were the only people in the semi finals, which was itself a very big achievement. We both lost the semi finals but it was fun. We had one player who was also a student of our coach playing for team Gujarat, and he won a gold medal which was given to me, as he had to go to his place a day before the prize distribution and after the tournament we sent him his medal with certificate. Although we didn’t have any matches went to the stadium to watch all the matches which were only for professionals. We learnt a lot on that day. I am really glad that I made a decision to go  to the tournament.

 

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