Drive for Dahl and Rice

This week, students have begun making donations for dahl and rice! Last week I gave a presentation to my school about my work over the summer with community concern society. This presentation revealed my commitment and passion towards this project! I asked the students and teachers to begin bringing in rice and dahl donations. I have exchanged emails with teachers and the head of secondary school to encourage students and teachers to bring in rice and dahl. This drive has developed my leadership skills in terms of taking initiative, communication, and organization.

The following is an example of one of the many emails exchanged between myself and faculty in order to plan this event:

I also created posters that I posted around the school to serve as a reminder for the students to donate! The response by the students so far has not been great as we have had very few donations;however, I hope that these last few days with the reminders from their teachers and they will remember to donate!

In total we ended up raising 60kg of dahl and 110 kg of rice! When I delivered the food that we raised, the leaders of Community Concern Society were thrilled! They said that we had raised such a large amount of food that they would save our donation for the week of Christmas and give the rice and dahl to the women for the holiday! This was great to hear as it meant that mine and my school's efforts had payed off and made a difference in this community! 

Community Concern Society

This week I went to Community Concern’s Baby Clinic. At this clinic I helped distribute food items to mothers and children in need. I planned and initiated a talk on fire safety and the importance of washing hands. In the section on washing hands I spoke about how to properly wash hands, when to wash hands, and diseases that could be spread through hand contact.

When talking about fire safety I spoke about ways to prevent in home fires and taught the women the Stop, Drop, and Roll. I demonstrated the Stop, Drop, and Roll and then asked the children to come to the front of the room and demonstrate their understanding of this procedure. Through this activity I developed my public speaking skills.  I learned to speak clearly and confidently!The following are pictures of this event:

Helping Hands

I planned and initiated  a lesson plan which focused on writing and speaking skills related to introducing oneself. The students wrote their name, their age, and their favorite activities on a sheet of colored paper. They were all very excited about this activity and put great care into creating an organized and neat paper. The following are pictures of the class working on this activity.

Later the students stood in front of the class and presented their work. I ensured that they all spoke clearly and loudly. I can see them slowly becoming more comfortable with their English speaking skills. This week I identified my strengths and weaknesses as a leader. I realized that my confidence and people skills aid my leadership; however, I still have room to develop my skills with time management. 

YOGA

My yoga session this week was extremely relaxing. As each week passes, I find my skills in flexibility and strength to be developing. This week we focused on flexibility within the hips.  I undertook new challenges as I executed each new position. The following is a picture of me before yoga:

I find yoga to be a wonderful way to relieve stress and stay calm throughout the heavy work week. While at my yoga class, the stress of the outside world and school are unimportant. A yoga pose which I have been working on perfecting is the backward prayer hands pose. The following is an image of what this pose looks like:

(http://www.dentonsatsang.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/namaskar-128x300.jpg)

Though this pose may look simple, it takes a lot of flexibility within the arms and shoulders to be correctly done. This pose is practiced every class and I can see myself  getting closer to properly executing the pose!

RCCI

Today was our first RCCI meeting. I have shown commitment within this activity as this will be my second year as a member of RCCI. Our focus of this session was physical fitness and hand-eye coordination  skills. We planned and initiated different activities for each individual young adult as each is at a different skill level. While some may shoot and make baskets, others are still working on the skill of catching a ball.  The following are some pictures from the first session:

This year I will continue to develop my leadership skills within this group. This year will be especially difficult because very few people signed up for this activity. We have about 5 OSC students and 13 local students from the center. 

Gecko Zine

This year I will be involved in a new club called Gecko Zine. My position within this club is the editor. This will be a new challenge for me as I have never been in a writing club before. This club works together to create a school magazine. We hope that this magazine will display the wonderful students and different activities held at OSC! At our meeting we discussed ways in which we could make the magazine more popular and effective. Additionally, we decided to publish posts every week about diversity.I believe this club will be a great way for me to identify my writing strengths and weaknesses. 

The following is the post I made this week for Facebook to display our school's diversity:

Max came to our school three years ago and is now a 12th grader 

at OSC. He is 50 percent Italian and 50 percent Australian. Max is fluent in English,

 Italian, and French.

Helping Hands

Today was our first official helping hands session! I was extremely excited to be back with the kids as I enjoy this club greatly. I planned and initiated a variety of “get to know you” activities. These included a game in which the students had to state their name, age, and favorite food in front of the class. They later had to toss a board eraser to another student and repeat the other person’s information. This activity improved the children’s confidence in speaking English in front of a group and also helped them get to know each other. The following are pictures of this activity:

In the next activity the student were asked to organize themselves in alphabetical name order. I planned this activity in hopes that it would improve speaking skills, memorization of the English alphabet, and help the kids remember each other’s names. 

Finally, I took pictures of the kids that they will use next week to make name tags. Overall, this was a productive and fun first session. Helping Hands has greatly helped in developing my leadership and teaching skills! I took on a new challenge when joining this club last year as it was my first experience with teaching younger children.