Key Club!

Mission statement:

Key Club is an international student-led organization which provides its members with opportunities to provide service, build character and develop leadership (for more information, visit www.keyclub.org).

Our school is the first school in Sri Lanka to have Key Club. This was brought in by Ms. Shameela, our CAS coordinator and this year is our first year of the Key Club.

All the CAS leaders are the members of the Key Club and last week we’ve selected the President, Vice-president, Secretary and Treasurer. I’m happy to inform that I’ve been elected as the Treasurer of this youth club.

The board members are;

President: Damien Martin

Vice President: Harini Liyanage

Secretary: Annie Gillstedt

Treasurer: Terunaga Tamura

Editor: HeeSoo Kim

Directors: T R Aparna, Maheshi Dharmasiri, Sandushi Pathiraja, Avindya Koralagamage, Keisha Gani.

This is a big organization and I now have a big responsibility as the treasurer, but I’m fully committed to accomplish my duties with the help of others. There are many duties as club treasure, but the general duties are;

• Control the club’s money, its collection and disbursement.
• Transact all business through a bank or school account. Many schools do not allow clubs to keep independent checking or savings accounts. It does not matter who writes the check – school officials or the Key Club treasure. What does matter, though, is that the treasurer be responsible for keeping accurate books that will enable him/her to give a full financial report whenever requested.
• Reconcile bank statements.
• Record all expenditures and income for the week.
• Deposit club funds.
• Collect all monies from club projects.

 These are the general duties and I’ll be continuing these until February 2012.

Goals:

Through this fantastic youth club, the goals I hope to achieve are;

• Increase awareness of my strengths and areas for growth
• Undertake new challenges
• Plan and initiate activities
• Work collaboratively with others
• Show perseverance and commitment in activities
• Engage with issues of global importance
• Consider the ethical implications of the actions
• Develop new skills

I hope that our first year of Key Club will be successful and fulfilling!

The pictures below are from the Key Club installation ceremony.

Season 4: Badminton Team Training

This year, we have our first badminton team in the school and I’ve been elected one of the leaders of this activity along with Mo. This will be one of my major Action in this semester.

The activity has started on the 15th of February and this will go on until the 26th of March. The plan is to practice the fundamental strokes and techniques badminton until the end of February, and have matches with other school in Colombo in March.

The members of this badminton team are;

Coach

• Mr. De Silva

Boys

• Uthpala
• Karl
• Rasmus
• Devansh
• Kwabena
•  Sam
• Myself

Girls

• Mo
• Tanya
• Keiko
• Vera
• Georgia
• Yuko

The schedule at training sessions will be divided into the following order:

• Physical training
• Practice of strokes play
• Match practice (singles and doubles)

The training sessions will be held at the following times:

• Tuesday 2:40 p.m to 4:15 p.m
• Friday 2:40 p.m to 4:15 p.m
• Saturday 10 a.m to 11:30 a.m

Goals:

As I’m the leader of this badminton team, I’d like to set some goals which I hope to achieve throughout the 6 weeks of training.

• Undertake new challenge as a leader
• Increase the awareness of my own strengths and areas for growth
• Plan and initiate activities
• Work collaboratively with others, especially with Mr. De Silva and Mo
• Show perseverance and commitment
• Develop new skills

Since 2 weeks have passed, I feel that I’m achieving most of these goals. First of all, I’m undertaking new challenge as one of the leaders of the first badminton team at OSC. Since I was and am also the student leader of the after school badminton, that has been helping me quite a lot. I believe that this challenge is the extension to leading the after school badminton.

As I’ve been practicing for the past 2 weeks, I feel that my strengths and areas for growth has become evident. In my opinion, my strengths are taking leadership in the team and making decisions. In terms of badminton, I believe that my strengths are the net play and serving. My areas for growth are to tell everybody clearly what to do, and to make everybody do what Mr. De Silva tells them to do, as some people aren’t following the instructions. In terms of badminton, I believe that my areas for growth are dropping and backhand strokes.

As for planning and initiating activity,  this is going well and by working collaboratively with Mr. De Silva and Mo, we haven’t faced big problems so far. I hope that this will continue throughout the team training.

I believe that I’ve already shown perseverance and commitment in this team training. I’ve been attending every session on time and taking responsibilities as a leader, such as clearing the rackets that people have left on the court and collecting the shuttles etc.

As for developing new skills, it’s not something that can be done within few practices (in terms of badminton and other things) and I hope to be able to develop various skills as we have more practices.

Art Project Update 1

This week, we split the members into 2 groups: 1 group that will organize the room where most of the tools are kept, and another group that will organize the rack where the paints are kept, and also categorize the brushes according to the different sizes. I was in charge of organizing the paints and the brushes.

At the end of the day, Vidura and I finished organizing the rack and categorizing the brushes and sorting them out nicely. Savinda and Philipp who were in charge of organizing the tools etc had finished sorting out the pencils that were all mixed up, according to the sizes, darkness etc, and labeled each box so that students know which box contains which color, darkness and so on.

Today we achieved 3 of the goals of this project, which are

• Categorize the brushes according to the different sizes, separate the usable brushes and unusable brushes.
• Organize the place where the paints are kept. Categorize the paints which are new and used. Replace the paints when the tube is empty.
• Organize the room where most of the tools are kept. Label the boxes and sort the tools in each box, so that tools are not in any random boxes, and students can easily access the tools.

However, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done in the room where most of the tools are kept. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to finish organizing this room by about middle of March.

I will discuss about whether I’m achieving the 8 criteria or not, once every month.

Paint brushes after organizing (we organized according to the sizes, etc)

The rack where the paints and other materials are kept (picture taken after organizing the rack)

Goals for the Art Project

As Art Project has started as an official community and service project at OSC, I’d like to make some goals for this project.

First of all, the most important goals that I’d like to achieve are the 8 criteria;

• Increase the awareness of one’s own strengths and areas for growth
• Undertake new challenges
• Plan and initiate activities
• Work collaboratively with others
• Show perseverance and commitment in the activities
• Engage with the issue of global importance
• Consider the ethical implication of the actions
• Develop new skills

Secondly, the goals that I aim to achieve are the things that we want to do in this project (listed in the CAS Proposal), which are;

File papers, colored papers, paper-boards and card-boards in the correct place.

Organize the room where most of the tools are kept. Label the boxes and sort the tools in each box, so that tools are not in any random boxes, and students can easily access the tools.

Categorize the brushes according to the different sizes, separate the usable brushes and unusable brushes.

Sharpen pencils and sort each pencil according to the type, darkness, and size.

Organize the place where the paints are kept. Categorize the paints which are new and used. Replace the paints when the tube is empty.

Organize grade 12′s Art Room.

Use the database (created by a student last year) to make a record of the number of pencils, paints, colors and other specific materials and tools.

Tidy up where all the color pencils, erasers, scissors and other commonly used tools are kept.

I hope that this list will expand as we find more areas that needs improvements.

And last but not least, achieve the purpose of this project, which is to organize and clean the art room and make it a better environment for the students.

WWW Reflection

Last week we came back from WWW which was in Hambantota. Through this week-long trip, I’ve in fact achieved all of my goals and gained experiences that couldn’t be experienced here in Colombo.

As planned, on Tuesday and Wednesday, we visited a local school sponsored by OSC, and helped to paint the walls, playground equipments, decorate the walls etc.

For the first half an hour, we played little games and did some drawing with the children and we interacted with them. However, there was an issue of the language barrier and sometimes they didn’t seem to fully understand that we wanted them to do. I’ve considered the ethical implications of this activity. Because of the language barrier, the children may not have understood or enjoyed what we did together.

Picture of us interacting with the children 1

Picture of us interacting with the children 2

Picture of our group with the children

I was in charge of painting the walls and the playground equipments and since I’d done the same job last year, I took initiatives in painting walls and doing other maintenance in the school. We planned what each of us were going to do and worked collaboratively with others in painting. Painting walls and equipments for 2 days was something we were never exposed to before (last year, it was just 1 day of service) and I and everybody were tired, but I experienced something which I couldn’t experience in Colombo and showed perseverance and commitment in painting. I’ve certainly developed the skills in painting and increased the awareness of the area for growth.

Picture of myself painting the wall

I’ve also tried little bit of murals, which I’ve never done before, and I’ve undertaken the new challenge. Although it wasn’t an easy task, I’ve increased the awareness of the strengths and an area that could further be developed. Through this service work, we’ve engaged with issues of global importance. These areas were effected by the Tsunami and by helping these schools, we were involved in recovering the damage from Tsunami as well as providing better conditions for the local children to study.

Picture of our group doing the murals

Picture of our group after the completion of the service work

On thursday, we went to the safari ride at the Yala National Park. It was a great opportunity to go to one of the most famous safaris in Sri Lanka and I’ve certainly enjoyed this safari ride and observed the beauty of nature. It was great to observe some beautiful scenery and animals that we can’t see in Colombo.

Sunrise from the Yala National Park

Picture of dotted deers

Picture of us in the truck

This trip was full of new experiences and will be very memorable. Through this trip, I’ve done all three components of CAS, Creativity, Action and Service. Although this was the last WWW for us, the experiences we’ve gained in this trip will certainly be useful in the future!

Group photo

Block 3 After School Activity Badminton

After school badminton has started this week. In this block, I’m no longer leading the activity and I was planning to just enjoy playing badminton, however, it looks like I’m to be the vice-leader. Initially Rasmus was to be the leader and Skylor to be the vice-leader, but since Skylor couldn’t be part of this activity due to the involvement in the Secondary production, Rasmus has asked me to be the vice-leader. So once again, I’m going to be taking some leadership in organizing this activity with Rasmus and Ms. Lockwood, who’s the supervisor.

Since it was the first meeting, all we did was just play around with the new people. Next week, Rasmus and I’ll ask the students if they want to learn badminton or they just want to play for the fun of it. It’s  very important to know this because some students may lose an interest otherwise.

The goals which I hope to achieve in this after school badminton are;

• To help the students develop their badminton skills (if they want to learn, that is)
• To develop my badminton skills while also teaching the students
• To develop a leadership
• To further develop my teaching of badminton (this is the area for growth)
• To plan and initiate what we’ll do every week
• To work collaboratively with Rasmus, Ms. Lockwood and everybody else
• To show perseverance and commitment in this activity.

Art Project, the First Week!

Today, the Art Project started as a new official community service project at OSC. The full members of this project are;

•  Sascha
• Philipp
• Savinda
• Vidura
• Mo (vice leader)
• Myself (leader)

Today we started organizing the room where most of the tools are kept. This is one of the major goals and this is the area where Ms. Barnett really wanted our help, so we decided to work on it (however, Mo and Sascha were working on creating the posters which will be posted for the CAS meeting with the parents on Tuesday next week). At first, we sorted the paints according to the different sizes, colors, the use etc and put them in different boxes and labeled them. After that, we took all the boxes that had pencils and sorted them according to the color and the darkness (6B, 4B, 2B etc), and labeled each box.

Today these were the only things we could do and I think that we’ll need to spend another month or so, organizing this room because as far as I can tell, tools are all over the place and it will take sometime to finish organizing this room. However, since we have 6 people, I’m thinking of assigning 3 people to organize this room each week, then the rest can do something else.

Picture of myself sorting out the paints.