Timeline: September 17, 2021 – June 17, 2022

In this experience, I worked during lunch to help the librarian with different tasks such as shelving, checking in, checking out, covering, and registering the books in the library. I opted to do library duty on Friday during lunch break. I have always been interested in how the library system at our school works. I was doing Library Duty with 2 of my friends. In addition to all these tasks, I was also the Team Leader for Library Duty on Friday, so I had to plan the tasks for each volunteer every week. Throughout the year, we did a lot of different activities, such as “A blind date with a book” and “Battle of the Books”. 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 remembering how to shelve the books in the correct order and in the correct sections. There were many different sections in our school library: PYP Fiction, PYP Non-Fiction, Picture books, MYP Fiction, MYP Non-Fiction, etc. And although all of the books had correct labeling, sometimes, the numbers and letters on the code would be confusing. Therefore, I found a solution to this. Whenever I picked up a set of books, I used to sort them out according to their labels first, and then I used to shelve them. This technique helped me a lot, and I was able to shelve all of the books perfectly every Friday. During this experience, I also developed various other new skills such as: wrapping up books perfectly with plastic, and barcodes and stamping all of them.

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

In this experience, we used to have regular tasks every week, like shelving, wrapping books, checking books in and out, etc. And, since I was the team leader, I had to plan out tasks for each member of the group. To organize this, I created a document consisting of the different tasks for each member. Additionally, if we occasionally had some events coming up, I would plan for the tasks related to that event and tell each member what they had to do as well. I feel like I am a very organized person. So, planning wasn’t a very difficult aspect of this experience. But, I think that motivating the other members was a little bit difficult at times since everyone had some summatives/assignments coming up.

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

First of all, this experience happened during lunch. And, we used to have slots after lunch, during which we used to have a lot of summative. So, there were a lot of times when I wished that I had the time to study during lunchtime on Friday. However, library duty was becoming more interesting and unique as the months were passing by and I didn’t feel like skipping it anymore for tests. I also felt like I could just stay up for a few hours on Thursday night to study. I feel like it’s important to show commitment and perseverance because life won’t always be easy, and will be constantly throwing challenges at us. So, if we knew how to persist through all of those things, life might turn out to be easier for us.

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. It was also quite easy for me to collaborate with the other members of the group during this experience. Fortunately, no one in this group was difficult to work with. I believe it is critical to be able to collaborate because it is not always possible to do everything alone in life and we will need the assistance of others. So learning collaboration skills is definitely advantageous right now. Teamwork was essential in this experience because we needed to complete the majority of the week’s work before the weekend.

In this experience, I tried to develop as a communicator. During this experience, 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. All in all, I learned a lot of different skills during this experience, that were very valuable to me.