As the final two years come to end, the time has come to look back and reflect on over the years of creativity, action, and service and my initial as goals, and how these reflected on the 8 learning outcomes.
Undertaking New Challenges:
All throughout the two years, I have been constantly trying out things and challenges that are new to me, from making shirts (surface embellishment) to my first SAISA (basketball) to ping pong to teaching primary kids about Sinhala (Mother Tongue Service Group). From doing this, slowly, I have seen myself push myself out of my comfort zone and try out new things more confidently with a positive outlook on it. Which I believe is a vital skill that will benefit me both in the present and the future.
Developing New Skills:
I have developed quite a few new skills over the past 2 years, and also have significantly improved on existing ones as well. Through surface embellishment, I was challenged to see art in a different perspective and move out my comfort zones for art, by making shirts through stitching, stencil making, etc. I also learned the skill of patience, which is something I learned and realize over the years of my involvement in the arts, as things may not always work out the first time and you may not achieve the result you desired, but you have to keep trying and learn from your mistakes. Through different sports, especially SAISA Basketball, I was able to truly understand the value of teamwork (working collaboratively with others), and how it is an essential part of the game. Even in service, I was able to develop leadership skills, especially since we had to teach our classes to younger, primary kids, who sometimes can be quite the handful! I think all these new skills I have learned along the way will help me in the future, with not only future activities, but life in general as well.
Greater Awareness of Areas for Development and Growth
This outcome was achieved through all activities done, as there is always room for improvement. I was able to identify and become more self aware of my weaknesses and strengths, without having a coach or teacher to point it out for me. This was especially seen in Drawing Club, and the sports I tried out (Basketball, football, etc.), as I was always reflecting on how I could drawn the piece better, or how I could have played the game better, individually. This awareness has helped me improve a lot on myself as a person and within these activities, but more importantly I was able to develop the skill of self-reflection, and how this leads to improvement.
Planned and Initiated Activities
This was only seen in a couple activities, since only a few activities I partook in involved planning. The main ones being the two service I partook in; The Forgotten Children and Mother Tongue Service Group. In TFC we often had to plan fundraisers such as bake sales or movie nights and such, and also plan our trips to certain places (such as the good market) to help spread awareness. In Mother Tongue Kevin and I always had to plan out our lessons before hand, and decide what we were going teach and how to engage the kids at the same time. This really showed me how much a little planning can go a long way and become a great benefit in the future.
Showing Perseverance and Commitment in Activities
All the activities I took part in were always either a semester or year long commitment, however the activity I took part in the longest was drawing club, doing it for three out of the four semesters available. Due to this commitment I was really able to explore the realm of art from artists like Francis Bacon to just my own themed drawing to making shirts, and from this I have really improved this activity the most. It required a lot of patience, especially when I messed up one of my pieces, however, I managed to pull it off due to my hard work and commitment.
Engaged in Issues of Global Importance
This was mainly achieved in the services of Mother Tongue Service Group and The Forgotten Children, since the primary focus of these activities were to better the community we lived in. In Mother Tongue we were mainly focused on spreading language and culture within our community since all over the globe language, and along with it, cultures, are dying every second, and we want to help preserve the culture we have available to us. We also wanted to focus on giving back to the community we lived in. While in TFC we were focused on a much more mature issue of child sex tourism in Sri Lanka, since we realize it is a major problem (not seen by the public as it is often kept underground away from the public) both locally and globally, and we wanted to help spread awareness on this topic since we felt like it needed to be addressed.
This was also seen during IB orientation, as we were split into groups and each group would interview someone in the local community. My group were able to interview a local judge for the local villagers. From this I learned, about the struggles they had, just to get access to clean water and plant tea leaves, issues always arose and the judge had to involved to help the villagers. This helped me realize lucky I was to have grown up in a comfortable environment, with all the resources I needed, and how we always need to look after one another, as we need to appreciate everyone and everything for what they have.
Consideration of Ethical Implications
This wasn't achieved in many activities, since it wasn't one of my goals, however, this was seen in my service group last year; The Forgotten Children. Since we were dealing with such a sensitive topic of child sex tourism, we always had to be careful of what were going to do and say. For example, at the primary school bake sale and movie night we did, we e-mailed the parents saying the reason for our fundraisers and our objective, and how we wanted to, in addition to the movie and bake sale, educate the kids on safety in public, the parents got quite afraid. We later received numerous e-mails saying that they didn't want they kid exposed to such topics (as they thought we would discuss about the topic of child sex tourism with them, even though we were not going to), so we had carefully plan and organize our activities and what we planned on doing.
Working Collaboratively with Others
This was seen in many of the activities I took part in, even activities that would be considered only for individuals (such as drawing club). As often I realized, that even individual activities, needed collaboration with colleagues and teachers to truly succeed and improve in the activity. In drawing club, I would always receive advice from my peers and teachers on how to improve my drawings, and sometimes I didn't understand their perspective, however, through collaboration I was always able to improve my drawing and feel truly satisfied.
This was also achieved in Basketball (both SAISA and ASA), as basketball is a heavily based team sport, to the point where if teamwork is not there, then it is an automatic loss. Even the greatest basketball players such as Dwayne Wade, Tim Duncan, Micheal Jordan, etc. all were part of a team and had to co-operate with their team, as otherwise they wouldn't be able to reach their point of status and skill. I learned this as well through first-hand experience from games and practices. As when we ran a play as team and worked the ball around, the ball would always find its way into the hoop, and there is a much higher score rate when we worked together as a team.
