Hello! I am Arrika Samnani. Teacher’s are an amazing source through which we gain knowledge, ideas, perspectives, life lessons and much more. Just like our ancestors say that our future lies in the hands of our children, our teachers put forward their time and effort in order to prove this. And to praise, appreciate the teachers, a few set of students including me decided to do a little something for the teachers. I was a part of the organizing committee. Before the actual event, we met for 3 days to discuss and finalize every event that was to take place and to make sure everything was communicated well in advance. The duties and responsibilities were also distributed by then. I was the incharge for the games, activities and making envelopes for the gift cards.
I chose this project because I have been seeing a lot of teachers giving their 100% so that students can score good and do better. I have also been wanting to make them feel their worth. I also like to get involved into creative things, planning and executing events and hence this is something that inspired me to be a part of this activity. I aimed to be a good organizer for the event, make sure that it went smoothly, and make sure that the teachers have a good day.
I improved certain skills like communication skills while sharing ideas with my peers to make sure everything was conveyed smoothly. I also worked upon my management skills by taking control of the environment and actions around me, managing all resources and looking after arrangements. I also attributed risk-taker as I knew there might be some things that can go wrong, and hence kept in mind certain things and was courageous to take step towards them. I faced some difficulties like taking into consideration everyone’s perspective but I gradually respected all of them.
Throughout the event, there were multiple things happening like performances and activities side by side. I could see all the teachers being very enthusiastic which made me be satisfied of my work. While doing this CAS experience, I demonstrated the following LO’s:
LO1: Identifying our strengths and developing areas for personal growth. Leaving my comfort zone has been a task for me since years, hence organizing events, doing something out of the box really helps me to improve. For instance, while working in groups I have always wanted to do everything myself but gradually I could make out that everyone should be given a chance, and the same happened during teacher’s day. So, I learned that though my strengths are that I can organize and execute well, make things work, manage everything but I need control on the amount of work I do. I really like working with art and craft stuff but I have not been able to do that due to several reasons, but through this experience I could make many envelops that helped me furnish my skills and grow. I also like to speak in front of a group of people and so I encouraged myself to speak up things infront of the teachers, this helped overcome my confidence and grow in terms of fluency.
LO2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process.   Waking up early for 3-4 consecutive days was a task because I had a lot of assignments going on and keeping up with everything was challenging. I mostly like to do my task at night but then waking up early and coming early was something that couldn’t work but I still managed to do so. The preparations also happened during the class slots and hence a lot of content was missed, so coping up with that was a task, but I had faith in myself and did it all independently then at home. I developed communication and self management skills by making sure all the content was passed on effectively and everything was arranged before hand.
LO3: Demonstrate how to initiate and plan CAS experience. Just like mentioned earlier, how I like to organize events and plan out every activity. I had seniors above me who had the whole plan ready and told it to all the members and gave tasks to us. Even I had a document created where everything from the resources, expectations, on day duty was mentioned.
LO4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences. As fascinating as events like these sound, but are exhausting too, leading to loss of interest, less participation and so keep up the enthusiasm I was very proactive and responsible enough to make a timeline and schedule as to how I want to give equal time and effort in every activity I do. I made sure I was updated on every event that changed, I made sure to actively participate for all the days as well as the planning days.
LO5: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively. Team work has always been my thing, that I thoroughly enjoy. Interacting with different people, exchanging ideas and perspectives is just so cool! Ofcourse, due to the nature of the event it did have a lot of volunteers working together which might seem healthy but is necessarily not because managing them could be a task. Someone people might work, some might not, some might just point out at things. But due to everyone being patient and cooperative I think things collaboratively turned out very well. We thought there might be lot of challenges but they were comparatively less. Everyone was aware of their roles and were responsible. The team was very interactive and empathetic that I didn’t feel like I was working with a set of people that were unknown. I made so many new friends through the journey. I developed very well social skills, meeting a lot people, exchanging thoughts, negotiation, respecting perspectives was something that definitely got better during the days.
Overall, with new things come new lessons something to be proud of something to remember. I learned vastly how to be with a set of people, collaborate, work together and all in all I am proud of the way I contributed to make the events successful. Here are some glimpse of the event:
