Final Reflections Help Session

CONSIDERED THE ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS OF YOUR ACTIONS

Choose ONE of your SERVICE activities from the past two years. Reflect on how your involvement in the activity relates to the following quote. Title this reflection "the ethical implications of (name of service activity)".

"Doing good is not about doing something, it's about doing the right thing." *

Alternatively, this quote could be modified to:

"Service is not about doing something, it's about doing the right thing." or
"Serving is not about serving in some way, it's about serving in the right way."

Questions to help you:

• Did you do good? What good?
• How do you determine whether you did good or not?
• What does sustainability have to do with it?
• Was your service project sustainable?
• What could you do differently in the future? 
• What is you biggest critique of the service project? 

*This quote is taken from the article "North Korea Won't Be Liberated in a Day" by Mike Deri Smith, published on themorningnews.org. It is in reference to criticisms of the the viral KONY video campaign of 2012. 

For Brent Diploma CAS Students:

Write a final reflection that answers the following question. Which CAS activity/ies has/have helped me to grow the most and how?

  

Upcoming CAS Activities - PROPOSALS!

For all possible CAS activities, you must be able to show how this, for you, is a new experience, a personal challenge and provides opportunity for growth in the learning outcomes.

- CREATIVITY -
Brent's Got Talent
Chapel Choir
Brent Day Production

- ACTION -
Boys Basketball
Girls Football
Cross Training Fitness Club - See Mr. Nichols.
Girls Tennis Club - See Mr. Wright.
Yoga - Taking a Yoga class could be a great way to survive your last semester and get mentally prepared for IB exams.
Hiking - 'Tis the season for hiking Mt. Pulag (or any other mountains in the Cordillera region)

- SERVICE -
Brent ICT Outreach Service Club - Come teach practical technology skills to disadvantaged youth in our community. Share your school's resources with those who don't have the same opportunity to access and practice technology use.

White Coats on Every Kid - Come teach fun and engaging science experiments to disadvantaged kids in our community. You will learn a lot about being a better communicator and teacher and you will have the opportunity to help kids see that school, learning, and science are FUN!

Community Service Club

G12 Homework

1. Write any missing reflections or mini-reflections for 1st semester CAS activities.

• Go here for HOW TO WRITE A QUALITY REFLECTION

2. Fill out Individual CAS Completion Form. (To be submitted when we come back from Christmas vacation.) This will help you identify where you have not demonstrated growth so that you can choose second semester activities that will fill these gaps.

3. Highlight and tag/label all of your evidence.

• Highlight the part in your reflections that shows evidence of growth in one or more of the IB CAS learning outcomes.

• Then add a label to the post identifying for which learning outcome the post exhibits evidence.

Things to remember: 

Collaboration is more than just "other people were there".

Challenge means really hard.

New Skills must be specific and named.

Engaged with Global Issues must be ACTIVE PARTICIPATION and INVOLVEMENT

Initiated means initiated - and if you were working in a group, you need to be able to show what you personally INITIATED.

CAS must be completed over an 18 month period. You must have some degree of BALANCE across the three areas: Creativity, Action, Service.

Working on Reflection

Next week, G11 students will have a study hall class devoted to CAS reflection writing. Writing good reflections is as critical to achieving growth in the eight CAS learning outcomes as participating in meaningful CAS activities is.

We will be going over various resources for developing the tool of reflective writing and practicing writing reflection for one of your current CAS activities.

Resources to check out:

• http://www.lc.unsw.edu.au/onlib/pdf/reflective.pdf
• http://www.lc.unsw.edu.au/onlib/reflect2.html
• http://www.clt.uts.edu.au/Scholarship/Reflective.journal.htm
• http://www.arts.ac.uk/cetl/visual-directions/flash/reflective/flash_reflective.htm
• http://library.bcu.ac.uk/learner/Study%20Skills%20Guides/7%20Reflection.htm
• http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/library/a31988_3.pdf

Are Brent students really green?

Many of you are business students. You probably have studied different marketing strategies. This article explains how different marketing strategies may or not be successful when used with different environmental initiatives.

http://www.goodlifer.com/2011/04/mainstream-green-moving-sustainability-from-niche-to-normal

The study shows how different societies are made up of different groups with different attitudes and behaviors related to "being green".

The study defines the following groups:

• Super Greens - They lead the way green behaviors. They 
• Upper Middle Greens - They recognize the need to make green choices but are sometimes detracted by high cost or great inconvenience.
• Lower Middle Greens - Tend to see impending environmental disasters as hype. They are less likely to make a decision merely on the basis of what is good for the government.
• Green Rejectors - They completely reject the idea of environmentalism. They so not see how environmental issues affect them and much less so how they should change their behaviors in order to have less impact on the environment.

How do you think that the Brent community compares with either the U.S. or China??

Image source: http://www.ogilvyearth.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/OgilvyEarth_Mainstream_Green.pdf

Action in Nature

Do you suffer from nature-deficit disorder? ACTION activities anyone? (Outside the gym...)

Source: http://www.facebook.com/TheWildernessSociety

MUN Demonstration Debate

Hey MUNers,

In the past, I don't believe that MUN members have had any special role in United Nation Week festivities at this school. That seems odd, doesn't it??

I'm sure if you discussed amongst yourselves you could come up with a neat way to participate and show that MUN is a creative and talented group of students who are knowledgable about current events and global issues.

What about orchestrating a mock general assembly with the entire student body's participation?

An activity such as this would take a lot of planning and organizing, commitment, initiative, creativity, etc. etc.etc. It could be really cool, though!