Sanskriti Club (Creativity Service)
Activity– To run my own club, where members of the club can learn about the scientific rationale behind Indian cultural practices or traditions. We sometimes just blindly follow our culture without knowing its origin and purpose and to put an end to that, to educate people about the scientific principles associated with our culture, I started this club.
Goals:
Creativity-uploading videos on the highlights of what was done in the club; making an ig page for the same; continuous posting on the page, make it look ‘cool’ so the youth can be convinced to give importance to this and take actions for the same.
Service- educating people about the scientific principles associated with our culture through various platforms, youtube, guest speaker sessions in the club, and sharing of online resources as well.
LO1
Did you identify your strengths and weaknesses?
| Strengths | Weaknesses |
| -Creative ideation | -the only person, lots of workloads, trouble prioritizing and organizing |
| -good delivery | -my knowledge is limited on the matter |
| -coherence and logical flow to the teaching |
How do you feel now that you’re aware of it?
I feel like I must work on each of my weaknesses by devising an action plan to help me better run my club.
Why is it important for us to know our strengths? Or weaknesses?
It is important to know both of them, for us to know where we truly stand. If we know our weaknesses, we know the areas we need to put in the extra effort to achieve perfection and if we know our strengths, we can make sure we use all of them to put our best foot forward.
Did you work/ or would like to on your weakness
I did work on my weaknesses. For workload, I devised lists for the day, so that it didn’t seem overwhelming and I could get the work done too. After finishing each day’s list I would treat myself, to keep me motivated.
For limited knowledge behind the rationale, I read (Why do we, Hindu Rites and Rituals); went through several blogs, websites and compiled all the new knowledge into a PPT so that I don’t miss out on any of the important learnings. Further, to enhance my knowledge I contacted school Hindi teachers, as part of my primary research and widened my knowledge.
Relate one area where overcoming this weakness would have benefited you
It benefits me to grow as an entrepreneur. I came up with this new idea, having to run it by myself, organizing it, helps me work on my managing skill. Regarding the limited knowledge, overcoming this helps me become a better student, read more, engage more with my curiosities; taking action to bring change; all of which helps me grow as a student.
LO2
What was so challenging and why?
The most challenging part was to come up with an agenda every week. Since I was the person who was running the club, I had to take feedback, incorporate that and plan and conduct the entire session all by myself. That combined with the G-11 workload, both seemed to be challenging for me; since I had to expand my knowledge-my resources each week.
Have you done anything similar before?
I conducted PLA, peer learning assistance, which made me go through a similar process
How did you overcome this challenge?
I overcame this challenge by organizing better and increasing my scientific reading papers. I cut down on my romance and fantasy novels, to make time for more cultural scientific knowledge, such that I would have more agenda to pan out to, for the entire week.
How do you feel about having undertaken this challenge? Why is it important for you to undertake new challenges?
I feel happy having undertaken this challenge since it helped me grow my knowledge and insights. It is important to undertake new challenges as being in the comfort zone wouldn’t enhance my growth.
Did you discover any skills you hadn’t known or learned yet? How could this skill be useful to you in the future? How does having this new skill make you feel about yourself? Why is it important to learn new skills?
As mentioned above, I discovered the skills of enhancing my delivery when teaching, organizing time, and scheduling accordingly such that I could successfully plan an agenda for each week. Organizing, panning out time for important activities is going to help me fulfill all my tasks and help me manage my time+workload. Important to learn new skills to grow as a student. This skill makes me more confident about myself; since I see the 12th graders struggling with their deadlines and with this added skill I feel like I can better manage my time to meet my deadlines on time.
LO3
How did you organize yourself?
By planning deadlines for myself in my diary
Are you usually an organized person?
Not really, I just make a to-do list for every single day, since long-term goals sometimes scare me. So I break it down into an everyday list, to end up achieving the long-term goal.
What was difficult? Planning or the initiating? Why?
Planning was the tough part as mentioned above, since each week I had to find out new engaging content which the club members would be interested in and could relate to the same.
Did you discover any skills you hadn’t known or learned yet that you had to use for the planning and initiating of this activity?
Patience and setting appropriate deadlines. Whenever I decide on deadlines, I make them a little too extreme and when I am not able to fulfill them, it appears to be a bit disappointing and demotivating. Thus, overall, I worked on accurately estimating the time and effort required to complete a task and setting achievable deadlines accordingly.
Do you think planning or initiating anything in the future will be easier now?
To a certain extent, yes, since now I am habituated to setting realistic and achievable deadlines.
Why is it important to know how to plan and initiate activities?
Planning ensures a framework and helps you stay in check with the deadlines. Initiating the plan helps you in the execution towards the goal in mind.
LO4
What made this activity difficult where perseverance or commitment was necessary? How did that make you feel?
When I had to continuously research and extend my knowledge; further, work on social media marketing all by myself. At that point, I was about to give up on the club since it felt like it was too time-consuming but I didn’t. I came up with better ideas(like open research sharing meetings, where all the members would research and share their key findings ) and circumvented my adversities. I committed myself towards the main goal in mind and that makes me feel more confident about myself.
What commitment was required to complete this activity?
Commitment towards the goal in mind. The goal towards the end was to educate and ignite the passion in the youth, to get to know more about their culture.
Is it easy for you to commit to things? To be persistent? Why or why not? Why is showing perseverance and commitment important?
Being humans, it is not easy for us to commit to things and be persistent all the time. We lose energy, or sometimes out of stress, we tend to lose interest and lose our commitment. But at those points of time, it is important to show our perseverance and commitment, since we must push ourselves to achieve something we truly passionately want.
LO5
Is working with others generally easy or difficult for you? Why?
It is moderate as it totally depends on the person/people I am working with. When the people I work with procrastinate a lot, sometimes it is a bit difficult and annoying, since I have to give them the push and keep motivating them. If the person is active and interested in the task, then it is relatively easy.
So, based on your answer to the above question, during this particular activity, was it easy or difficult for you to work with others? Did you have to work with anyone difficult? How did you handle it?
It was easy since the learners volunteered to be a part of the club. It wasn’t forced, they took the initiative of being a part of the club and they stuck with their word. A learner or 2, just joined the club for the sake of it and after a pep talk or two, they were engrossed and committed.
Why is it important to be able to work collaboratively with others?
It helps improve productivity, helps take off the burden and with more brains working, produces a better output/product/ and helps me spread out my message to a wider audience.
What was the importance of teamwork or leadership in your activity?
It was important for me to take leadership since it is my project and I had to take all the initiatives; in order to achieve my goals. Teamwork, since I had to understand the interests of the members and based on their interests, I had to take the onus of planning the agenda accordingly.
LO6
What were the issues?
The global issue that I focused on was quality education. Textbook knowledge is needed but so is the ability to connect that knowledge with the real world. As important as the scientific and mathematical concepts are for the young students, it is as important for them to know about their culture and roots. Therefore, to fulfill the quality education component: connecting science to the real world and knowing more about our culture and roots; I catered to the issue of lack of quality education.
Why are they important globally? How? Where? How did you know?
Globally quality education is a must. I know this because of the current situation in India. Most of the Indian engineers or qualified students, they have textbook knowledge however, they lack the skills, due to which they are in crisis to find a job. I know this because of the stats and because of how the government currently emphasizes quality education rather than just providing education to the child. Therefore, it is globally important to apply knowledge(in this case scientific knowledge) to the real world and understand its implications.
How does knowing about global issues contribute to your personal growth? How does it make you feel now that you are aware of this global issue? How does your work in this CAS activity make you feel about that global issue?
It contributes to my personal growth as I ponder about it and take action on the same, in the mode most appropriate for me. It makes me feel motivated, to make a change, in a manner that supports my voice and personality. My work makes me feel proud that through my actions, I was able to address the global issue in some manner.
LO7
What ethical issues were involved in this activity? Explain
I was the one teaching the concepts and I am not a professional certified teacher. I researched and shared the knowledge, however, for all the research tools that I used, I didn’t rule out the authenticity of each source.
Did the ethical issues affect you directly or indirectly?
It did affect me directly since I had to be extra cautious about whatever information I shared with the members of the club and it always lingered on my mind when I took the sessions.
How did the issue make you feel? What was your opinion on this issue before this activity? Has it changed or stayed the same after this activity?
I was okay with the way things were going, however, as I took more sessions my opinion changed.
I thought if I was the member, I would be trusting the information given to me by the club and would want the members to verify before delivering any sort of information.
In conclusion,
I was able to demonstrate these LP’s when:
INQUIRER- when questioning the rationale behind our cultural practices and researching about the same
COMMUNICATOR- when communicating the rationale behind the practices to the members of the club
It is linked with science subjects; for instance, talking about diyas, I linked it to cohesion and adhesion forces. This activity benefits the members and the followers of the ig page, since they are learning about the scientific principles associated with cultural practices. The highlight of this experience was me learning about the logic behind our cultural practices, it surprised and intrigued me. This activity helps my entire community since they realize the implications of the Chinese whisper and now, understand that our culture isn’t just based on myth. When people were perceiving the knowledge and starting conversations on the comment section of my ig page of the club; it acted as a measurement of my success and brought me a sense of accomplishment and joy. I learned a lot of new knowledge and if I were to do the same activity again, I would check the authenticity and reliability of each source I used to gather and deliver the information.
