Timeline: September 13, 2021 – February 7, 2022

In this experience, I worked during lunch, with two other students, to teach and help students, who are planning to take the PSAT/SAT exam, with their English and Maths skills. I opted to do this on Monday during lunch break. This club was there in 2019-2020, but the leaders were in their senior year, so they were looking for some people to lead the club. In my PSAT 10, I was one of the highest scorers in the grade. So, they approached me, and I was more than happy to do it. During this CAS experience, I demonstrated the following Learning Outcomes:

Learning Outcome 2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process.

One particular challenge that I overcame during this experience was working with and talking to the students like I was their teacher. I had been a leader before in my previous experiences in high school. But, this was different. In this experience, I had to actually the teach the students something that I was myself learning at home. Hence, it was very difficult. To overcome this challenge, I studied all of the materials that we were going to teach/present to the students the next day. This ensured that I had enough knowledge to teach the students the next day. A new skill that I developed was teaching itself. For example, we used to go through some passages together in class, I would let the students discuss about the question and the text, and then write down their collective answer on the board. Sometimes those answers used to be wrong, and I knew that they were, but I wouldn’t interrupt the discussions, because we wanted to test their skill levels. I would, however, explain the answer to them when they had a look at the answers. This is a unique teaching quality that I learned from my own Economics teacher and I developed this skill in this experience.

Learning Outcome 3: Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience

In this experience, we had to plan tasks for every week and had to make a lesson plan. Since I was the leader of this experience, I had to do most of the work. I used to talk to the students in the group, and I also had to plan out tasks for the members. To organize this, we created a document that consisted of the various dates, the plan for that day, the presentations/documents that we would be required, some answers to the questions, and the teacher who would supervise us. Since this document wasn’t shared with the students in the club, we decided to make a folder with the various documents that we used so that the students can go back and look at all of the lessons in the past. We also added some useful resources and all of the official CollegeBoard resources in the folder.

Learning Outcome 4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences.

Firstly, these club meetings took place during lunch. And we used to have slots after lunch where we would frequently have summative assessments. So there were a lot of times when I wished I could study during lunchtime on Monday. But, as the months passed by, this club became more interesting and unique, and I didn’t regret being a leader in it. It gave me more confidence, and I just studied more on weekends. I believe it is critical to demonstrate commitment and perseverance because life will not always be easy and will constantly throw challenges at us. So, if we knew how to persevere in the face of adversity, life could be better.

Learning Outcome 5: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

Working with others is generally easy for me because I am very friendly and enjoy working with others when given the opportunity. During this experience, most of the time, it was easy for me to do the work. But, one problem that kept coming up was that a lot of time I had to do the other leaders’ work because they would either say that they are busy or they wouldn’t do their work properly. I believe that being able to collaborate is vital because it is not always feasible to do everything alone in life and we will require the assistance of others. Learning collaborative skills is therefore quite beneficial right now. Because we needed to do the majority of the work on the weekend, teamwork and understanding were vital in this experience.

Firstly, in this experience, I tried to develop as a communicator. I was able to express myself confidently and creatively. I worked well with others and listened carefully to their points of view throughout the experience. Secondly, I strived to be more reflective during this experience. I thoughtfully considered and worked to understand our strengths and weaknesses in order to support our personal development. Lastly, I attempted to be more caring during this experience. I showed empathy, compassion, and respect. I had a commitment to service, and I acted to finish that commitment.

Link to a video of a Kahoot session in this club: https://youtube.com/shorts/ambop6JUP8o?feature=share