SAISA BASKETBALL EVENT CREW

On February 5th, 6th, and 7th, SAISA girls basketball took place here in colombo. There were 7 teams that participated which included ASB (American School of Bombay), AISD (American international school of Dhaka, AISC (American international school of Chennai), KAS (Karachi american school), TAISM (The american international school of muscat), OSC (Overseas school of Colombo), and GC (Gateway College). Even though I did not participate, I joined the event crew which is a group of students who help organise the event and ensure it runs smoothly. My role in this was mainly communication between the event crew and the coaches of each team, updating them with announcements, with results, important notices/reminders, and ensuring there were no complaints/problems unattended to. This was challenging to me since I am usually a very shy person, however, I was able to step out of my comfort zone and be able to show more leadership qualities as well as being a risk taker taking on this responsibility to be able to contribute to the success that was this tournament.

The event crew is a very busy stressful but amazing experience. Unlike student leaders in any other SAISA school, all coaches are always incredibly impressed with our event crews. In the event crew students do not only help but organise the entire event themselves. It gives them a chance to be a leader and learn to deal with responsibilities crucial to making an event work. We learn about the importance of teamwork and efficiency, of contribution and dedication and learn about the consequences of our laziness or actions by problems coming about throughout the tournament. We learn how to attack problems head on and problem solve ourselves without the help of other teachers or adults. In the end the sheer joy of completing the tournament and all the compliments are incredibly rewarding. I think it is important for all students to be a part of the event crew at OSC at one point in their lives just because they will be able to learn so much about responsibility and problem solving. Throughout the stress of all the responsibility, the event crew for those three days of the tournament are like a family. We are able to have a great amount of fun doing all the tasks which takes some of the stress away as well as with our Athletics Director, Mark Shipley who ensures that we all stay motivated and determined to do our jobs.

Below is a picture of myself, Tulika, and Elizabeth watching the opening ceremony as well as the SAISA GIRLS BASKETBALL 2015 official logo:

Photo taken by Amruta (SAISA event crew photographer) 

Foreign Language Exchange

Our service group Mother-Tongue Literacy has officially become a primary after school activity. This means that every week during our regular after school thursday sessions we will now meet with a set group of students who have signed up for their "Fun with Languages" or "Foreign Language Exhange" activity. Myself and the other leader will go speak at a primary school assembly later this week to introduce the activity and explain its goals. We hope to be able to teach the members more about not only foreign languages but also foreign cultures through many projects and activities such as games. Hopefully they will be able to learn a lot and we can improve our own mother-tongues whilst promoting it to others.
Next thursday is our last session for this semester and during this time we will be working on reflections.

SGA

We have been working towards Gecko Factor in SGA. Currently we are still in the process of advertising, meaning that as treasurer my role is not significant at this point, however I am also part of the audition crew who will judge the auditions. These will be held on thursday and friday of the second week back at school while gecko factor itself will be held in march, so updates will be made throughout this time.

Here is the promotional video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9umyyvIJBo8&feature=youtu.be

MOTHER-TONGUE LITERACY

In the MT service group we have been working on two different projects, one with the entire group, and one with just the leaders. With the group we have been visiting the primary school for their poetry units. Each member of the MT group brought a poem in their language with an english translation and was assigned to a group of grade 4 students. Within that group we taught and analysed the different languages. Doing this with the primary students sparked an interest within them for the different mother tongue languages we offered and definitely increased language use amongst the primary school. This fit into our main goal by being able to spread our knowledge of language amongst our community.

The second project myself and the other MT leader have been working on is a new addition to the school. This will be a sign/banner for the main school entrance. On this banner there will be written in all languages of the nationalities in our school, welcome. The banner will include colors and diversity and will contribute to making our school seem more inviting hopefully.
We are currently still designing the content and finding the list of all nationalities as well as brainstorming possible solutions to if new nationalities join after the sign is already up. We have gotten permission from the Head of School, and even an offer from him to fund it.



(Pictures will be posted asap.)

BADMINTON

Although at the beginning of this sports season I had signed up for Girls Basketball, due to injuries I had to stop. Instead I decided to try out for SAIA badminton as the trainings are a bit less intense and wont pressure the injury as much  or make it worse.
This is my first time trying this sport but I do enjoy it. It challenges me as it involves skills I have never been required to use before and hopefully participating in badminton this season will help me grow as a person through commitment and risk taking.
The SAISA tournament for Badminton is in Dhaka Bangladesh this year and hopefully with a lot of training and improvement I will be able to travel, although I will need a lot of work.
So far I have only been to about 4 trainings and so development will be made along the way.

SGA

So far in the SGA we have been able to organize some spirit days to celebrate certain celebrations, and or to promote an event. We have had a Nerd day, Halloween dress up, Breast cancer awareness, and OSC SAISA spirit days. The amount of student body dressing up is increasing every spirit day, meaning that this is something we have to continue to do in order to get more of the students involved. For the halloween dress up day we tried to do something differently by offering a prize to the class with the highest percentage of students who dressed up. We have tried to promote these spirit days through videos, posters, sandwich boards, both amongst the school community as well as online. The next big event coming up by the SGA is the Gecko Factor. For this we are planning better advertising to try and get more people to come and watch as well as try out. 

SAISA SWIMMING

The swimming tournament at the American International School of Chennai was a great success. I travelled as the co-captain together with Gyungmo from 10th grade. I had never been captain of a sports team before but I noticed that especially the younger swimmers listened to me a lot more, and i was able to take on a leadership position amongst them. 

All the gecko swimmers did incredibly well, everyone managed to improve their personal bests, some even as much as 20 seconds faster. Our coaches were all at awe by our improvement during the competition. 

I was able to place in the B finals for every single one of the races I swam, placing between 7th and 12th place and being able to earn points for the team. It felt good being able to contribute to our teams overall score, however, I feel like I did not swim at my fullest potential. 

I am really proud of the way that our swimming team came together during the tournament, no matter the ages, 6th, or 12th, grade, we were all able to come together, make jokes, play games, and enjoy each other's company. A team like that is very difficult to find but I am so happy that our swim team was able to connect in the way that we have. 

The 3 days passed by way too quickly but a lot of memories were made. The geckos were always kind and supportive to athletes from other teams, and were often seen exchanging sportsmanship pins or just talking and hanging out. The younger swimmers were always eager to chant cheers and to jump up and down screaming when one of our team members were in the pool, the atmosphere was amazing. It was nice being able to get out of our usual school community and come together during this tournament and have the fun we did. 

During the award ceremony there were 2 possible trophies for the age groups and gender, and 2 trophies for the overall scores, meaning, that there were 16 possible trophies to give out, we managed to receive 2 of those trophies by earning the 10-12 age group boys and girls runners up. 

This was a huge achievement and scored a lot of points for the team, although we placed last overall we were not disappointed because we knew that every single person on the team was able to step up and earn points for the team and able to enjoy themselves doing so. 

This was my last SAISA swimming and by far one of the best ones I have been a part of. As captain, in order to thank the coaches for their support throughout the season, I wanted to give them something, from the entire team. Which is why with the help of other older members, we were able to get kick boards and cards and have the entire team sign them in order to thank them and give them something to remember this season by. 

Below are some pictures of SAISA swimming 2014: