“Reflecting over the last two years, I’m now much more active, not only in sports, but also in terms of community service.” So says one Grade 12 student who has come to the official end to his Creativity, Action and Service (CAS) programme. I hope though that, this isn’t the end of this particular student’s CAS involvement, but only one stage in an active life of giving back to the community that has given him so much.
Each student’s CAS programme is unique and the level of learning from it will vary from one individual to the next. Much depends on the student’s affinities and the type of activities the student chooses to be involved with. All students should find activities: that present a new challenge to them; that develop new skills; and that engage them in issues of global importance, to name a few of the expected learning outcomes that now play a critical role in CAS. The depth of learning through their involvement is evident in their reflective journal entries.
For example, the activity “Volunteering at St. Barnabas” is brought more to
life when reading her journal entry. “I never thought that I would talk to a homeless person on the street, but this activity has broadened my horizons and now I’m proud to say that I’ve done so. Because of CAS, I needed to find a place to work at in order to get service hours. That was when my friends and I came across a church run homeless shelter called the St. Barnabas’ Society Home. The supervisors told us we should learn to understand the lives of the homeless first, so we met up with a friend of the supervisors, “Ah Sing”, a homeless man who has lived on a bench in the park for over 15 years. I didn’t really want to talk to him at first, but after listening to him, my views about him changed. He was a very nice, genuine man. After talking for half an hour, we gave him a couple of sandwiches that we had brought along with us and said our goodbyes.”
life when reading her journal entry. “I never thought that I would talk to a homeless person on the street, but this activity has broadened my horizons and now I’m proud to say that I’ve done so. Because of CAS, I needed to find a place to work at in order to get service hours. That was when my friends and I came across a church run homeless shelter called the St. Barnabas’ Society Home. The supervisors told us we should learn to understand the lives of the homeless first, so we met up with a friend of the supervisors, “Ah Sing”, a homeless man who has lived on a bench in the park for over 15 years. I didn’t really want to talk to him at first, but after listening to him, my views about him changed. He was a very nice, genuine man. After talking for half an hour, we gave him a couple of sandwiches that we had brought along with us and said our goodbyes.”To sum up in the words of another graduating student: “The best things about CAS is not only the activities we are forced to do but also the element of reflection. They add to the whole process. Without the reflections we might never think about all these implications in what we’ve learned. Even though we might be reluctant to write them it does force us to actively reflect on what we are doing.”
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jonathanhamilton