SERVICE

In Mother-tongue we have been working on sending out requests to the primary school to be able to get a program started with them, either with their mother tongues or teaching them ours. Though this interaction has not been initiated yet, we hope to hear back soon.
Meanwhile we have been busy with presentations within our group on possible teaching material and activities for the primary school, giving each other feedback and evaluating these presentations.

SAISA SWIMMING

The SAISA swimming team will travel to Chennai on october 29th. Our team has been improving a lot, especially due to the weekly swimming meets. It gives us a lot of experience with race styled swimming as well as improving our diving and flip turns.
I hope to be able to boost spirit within the team in the coming week and hopefully find new cheers for us to use at the event.

My times for this season are slower than last, but i am hoping to improve them throughout the next month.

SGA

The first SGA event we had was the Back to school Barbeque and the Back to school Movie Night. The SGA booth was a huge success, especially the coconuts. We ran out of stock for all drinks we were selling, coke, sprite, water, coconuts, all except the milos. Even though we did make a lot of money, I feel like we could have raised the prices a little more and still sold the same amount. As co-treasurer this is something that will help plan for the next event and be able to determine what we can do that will be most beneficial. 

Although not as many people attended the movie night as we wanted, the people who did go seemed to enjoy it a lot, there were more older people than younger people so that would also be a factor to keep in mind in planning. 

So far in SGA, we've had one spirit day, Nerd Day. A lot of people dressed up and hopefully we'll be able to advertise and popularize future spirit days even more. 

Mother-Tongue Literacy

Last session even though our faculty leader Mr. Mueller was not present, The other student leader and myself got together with the group to come up with an overall goal and statement that our group would try to follow. After listing some of our smaller goals and discussing possible activities we came up with the following statement


Mother-Tongue literacy:

"Using our mother-tongue languages we want to create more cultural awareness and diversity in our community through collaboration with a variety of activities and games"

Goals for Academic Year of 2014-2015

Action Goals

To start off with the swimming season begins next week. I have been participating in SAISA swimming since 7th grade. This year will be my final year competing and the tournament will be held in Chennai, India. Previously, there had been medals for places 1 through 6, however they have changed it so only places 1-3 get medals. Which is why this year I hope to improve my 50m freestyle time in order to move from 6th place to 3rd. As well as that my 50m butterfly. 

I have been having a recurring problem with the breaststroke, as i get disqualified every IM race i compete in (Mixed strokes). I would like to try and permanently solve that issue this year and be able to compete and place for those two races without being disqualified. 

Last year was the first year I took part in the 200m backstroke race and would like to try the same this year hopefully being able to improve my personal best. 

If i am able to receive the captain position this year, then I feel like I'll be able to contribute more to the team through a leadership position and after my commitment to the team I feel like I'd be proud to represent the team during SAISA. 

Later in the year I might also try to participate in the SAISA basketball and football teams, however have not made a decision about this yet.

Other than SAISA's, throughout the year, I will still regularly twice a week be visiting the gym, Lifetime Fitness, in order to maintain fitness and work out. 

Creativity Goals

Since Last year OSC's swim coach Ms. Ramberg has started a new activity amongst 11th and 12th graders to design and create specific workouts and lead one of the groups during practices. This helps both to observe swimming techniques, leadership positions, as well as adding onto creativity for CAS. 
I am also currently Co-treasurer for the student government association. With this role I hope to help the sga with all their events and activities to help them make profit and be able to organize events which the school community will all enjoy 

Other than that, I hope to be able to join another after school activity which is creativity based, if not trying to experiment with projects at home. I haven't been extremely strong with creativity in the past and hope to be more involved this year. 

Service Goals

Even though I am no longer a part of the Gecko Inc. service group, I do hope to join a new group in order to contribute to the local community. I have taken up a leadership position in a new starting up service group called Mother-tongue Literacy. This service group is made up of students whose mother-tongue is not english. We hope to be able to promote these languages around our school community and even base activities around them in collaboration with the primary school's mother-tongues. The leader of this activity, Mr. Mueller, sees the group being able to be involved in the school's magazine, website, week without walls preparations, individual studies, and language B activities. Since it is a start up group it will both be easier but also challenging this year as we have no foundation to start off from but also we can try to make the group how we want it. I would like to, with the other student leader try and make this group more popular and be able to make a noticeable difference in our school with the mother-tongues present increasing our cultural awareness and international student body

FINAL CAS REFLECTION

Creativity:

• Gecko Inc Leader
• Event Crew Badminton

Action:

• SAISA Swimming
• SAISA Basketball
• Scuba Diving
• Gym 

Service: 

• Gecko Inc 

This year has been filled with many activities both academic as well as the creative, service and action aspects of CAS.

 This year I have been strongest in participating in action based activities and can confidently say that I have improved and met most of my goals I had put down for most of those activities. Even when the SAISAs I participate in had ended, I continued to exercise and got myself involved with another sports community in order to keep up my own health and participation in work outs. This shows my commitment to sport and the responsibility I take for myself. 

I also went out of my comfort zone, risk taking by getting myself involved in scuba diving. Once I was able to qualify for a certified open water PADI diver, I was able to take those skills and experiences and apply them to adventures elsewhere in the world. 

The knowledge gained through scuba diving has opened a whole new door for me. I was able to, during my spring break, dive at an amazing site. This military ship had been active in WWII and had sunk by an underwater attack. Over a few amount of years it had washed back ashore. Then, a volcano on the island of Bali erupted and sent the ship back underwater. It is now a popular diving site and the environment and life around the wreck is incredible. I will definitely continue to scuba dive and visit many new places all around the world. 

The service group Gecko Inc, though having huge difficulties at the beginning of the year was able to pull itself together and regularly get involved with a local community. I am extremely proud of the group and what we were able to achieve in time. Hopefully for next year the group and its members can continue to let this group grow and achieve great things. 

My creativity is the aspect of CAS which is weakest. Since taking chemistry as a group 6 subject, i am automatically not exposed to any of the arts and lack creativity based activities. However, I feel that if I am able to involve myself in groups such as the SAISA event crews, that I am able to complete my creativity requirements while growing as a person and learning new skills. 

GOALS FOR NEXT YEAR:

Action: 

• Be involved in 2 SAISAs 
• Continue to visit the gym twice a week
• Visit various countries and scuba sites

Creativity: 

• Be involved in an Event crew 
• Contribute to planning activities/events in the school

Service: 

• Join a new service group 
• Contribute to my best abilities in that group 
• Stepping out of my comfort zone
• Helping the local community 

GECKO INC SERVICE

Our service group has had two more sessions where the group of children came to OSC to do various activities. In my opinion, the group has grown. Every individual has had a chance to work privately with one of the kids and interact with them through small conversations. Though not completely there yet, all members have gotten more comfortable with playing with the children and all taken up some sort of leadership roles. One of the sessions we started off with a team game, the parachute. With this we wanted to make it more educational, and focused our games around calling out the colors in english, and having the kids both listen and call out the colors for themselves. We then tried to have a team building activity with putting kids in groups based on colors but we had trouble explaining the rules of the game and decided to move on. 
We then split up and partnered up with one of the kids and played frisbee. Every group did their own thing and made up their own games and gave each of us a chance to interact with the kids we were in a group with. 
The other session we went by the wishes of the kids and spent time playing volleyball. All the children were really enthusiastic about the sport and enjoyed the activities. They requested to have an actual competitive game against us for next session. 
Since the session this week will be the last for the year, we decided to do something different. We are going to have a normal session, again with volleyball until about 3:45 and then take the kids to the pool to teach them how to swim and have a goodbye party. We think that we have built a good relationship with the group and their supervisors and that we will be able to continue this for next year. 

Taken by: Nishant Gr. 11

Taken by Nishant Gr. 11