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CAS Project - Service 7 April

For the month of April we dedicated our CAS activity towards the chosen CAS project, which was the renovation of a wooden bridge, between the streets Mochtyńska and Leśny Potok. It is an crucial travel path, for citizens who wish to traverse the small canal, that divides this part of the Kobiałka estate in half. It is especially important for students who attend the local school and kindergarten. It was originally constructed thanks to local community funding from willing participants, as the district council decided to refuse granting any funding for the project. This was over a decade ago and since then the condition of the bridge had been slowly deteriorating. As can be seen on the provided pictures, multiple barriers were broken, while the original colour of the wooden floor was all but gone. We decided, as members of the local community, that it was high time for a proper renovation, that would future-proof the bridge.

The renovation took over 8 hours of arduous work . During this proces we changed multiple salient components of the construction, to provide nearby residents with safety while crossing such pivotal point as river. In total we’ve spent over 500 zlotys withing two days on the following components:

·        150mm brush

·        2 cans of slightly tinted preservation oil

·        6 oak wook bars 300x25x9

·        Set of 100 skrews

·        4 floorboards

·        3 pairs of protective gloves

The renovation took over 8 hours of arduous work. Over this period we did the following:

·        Stratch the outer Surface of the bridge with sandpapers and metal brushes attached to makita drill– ensuring that it preserves the bridge for multiple years

·        Replaced the rotten wood bars on barriers and floor of the construction – safety for crossing babies and bikes

·        Covering the Surface with a protective layer of oil, not wood preservant, because it would be strached of by crossing people. Oil is significantly more long lasting.

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CAS - Activity 6 March

The month of March I dedicated to a mixture of activity consisting of going to the gym and playing football. Over the course of the month I attended the gym for a total of 12 hours while played football for around 18 hours, which adds up to approximately 30 hours of activity over the course of four weeks.

I played in two matches, one against a team from Modlin called Joga Bonito and a local rival from Choszczówka called DKS. We came out victorious in the second confrontation, while barely losing in the first match, mostly due to a lack of an appropriate number of substitutes.

Due to a few changes in my personal life, I had to fundamentally reshuffle my entire schedule somewhere I the second part of March, which proved to be a struggle for the first few weeks, however, by the time April came this new approach helped me cope with the preparations to upcoming IB exams.

The main positive of taking part in so much activities, averaging around 1 hour every day is that I feel energized, healthy most of the time and have a well structured work-life balance. Nevertheless, in certain scenarios this much time spent on sports leaves me tired and exhausted, especially on week days, which is something I unfortunately have not found a solution towards, however, this is something I hope to improve upon in the future, potentially by working on my sleep schedule.

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CAS - Creativity 5 February

For the month of February I dedicated my CAS endeavour to creativity in the form of Oxford Debates. I participated in two debates as part of the (WLD) Warsaw Oxford Debates League, against two Warsaw high schools, Hoffmanowa high school and Żagle high school. However, most of the time spend on this activity came in the form of preparations conducted both at school as part of the debating club as well as at home in online meetings. I dedicated 3 hours for actual debating and between 9 to 11 hours for preparations.

The debated upon two separate topics, the first one being ,,The European Union should introduce a Carbon tax in the form of the CBAM mechanism", while the second one was ,,It is regrettable that social movements use messages based on generating a sense of guilt among recipients". While we spend a similar amount of time preparing for both of these debates, we only came out victorious in the second one, although the ruling which we lost for the first debate is highly disputable as although two out three judges ruled in our favour, they were overruled by the main judge regardless of the 2 to 1 ration in our favour. The main difficulty I encountered this month was juggling the debate preparation with my school schedule due to a large amount of school work. I was able to mostly overcome this issue by proper time management skills which remain one of the most important learnings that I have received from participating in Oxford Debates, apart from the obvious analysis and oratory skills.

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CAS - Service 4 January

As part of my first service activity in the CAS program, I became a volunteer for the Kids University operating in Warsaw. I have already aided this foundation last year when I completed over 24 hours of total volunteering work. For the month of January I took part in an activity designed for children aged 6-10 years old at the AWF in Warsaw and completed 6 hours over 4 lessons. The focus of the lessons were, how fast can we run depending on our warm-up, material of the floor on position we take at the start.

My main tasks as a volunteer where to prepare a reception area, to register all participants of the class, prepare the workshop room by distributing materials and watch over the children and help the lecturer in any ways necessary. The main difficulties that I encountered were children forgetting to bring their special notebooks which are used to register their presence and receive an official stamp. Some parents were annoyed that we were unable to replace those notebooks that were lost, however we were able to instruct them who to contact specifically to receive spare copies. During the lesson itself, the specific groups of children I encountered were very well mannered and eager to learn, as such there were very little tasks when it came to overseeing and making sure that everyone behaves appropriately. Overall, the experience was a success and based on the reviews we received at the end of each lesson, the children were entertained and content. Although it was difficult to take photos during the lessons themselves, below I provided the images that I was able to produce.

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CAS - Activity 3 December

For the month of December I once again dedicated myself to pursuing the activity part of the CAS program. My main goal for the month was to countinue to develop as a football player and work on my endurance. I took part in 6 football practise sessions before the Christmas break, which added up to around 10-12 hours of sports. These sessions can be divided into the 4 training sessions as well as the 2 matches I played in. As a team we primarly worked to enhance our cohesion and understanding of our specific play styles. To achieve this gola we employed the use of cones, agility ladders and specific drills. Our efforts were rewarded in our two league games, which we won convincigly. Although we took a two week break during the Christmas/New Years time period, we returned to planned training sessions once January begun. Overall, the exposure to playing football countinues to be a very rewarding experience to me that helps me develop physically and mentaly. Compared to the beginning of the school year, I can see significant improvements in terms of stamina and post-match recover. Below I provided a few photos from the last snowy training session.

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CAS - Activity 2 November

I decided to dedicate the month of November to the activity section of CAS. As my primary form of physical activity I choose attending the gym and practising football. For four weeks I dedicated a total of 26 hours with 12 hours spend on football practise and 14 being spend for the gym. The main difficulty when it came to playing footbal, which I have been doing since around the age of 6 every week, was the terrible Polish weather. However, I was able to overcame this problem with proper clothing and determination. Alongside my football team CKS Puszcza Choszczówka we were victorious in two local league matches against MKS Pomiechówek and Sparta Tarchomin. Involnving myself in regular phycial activity and sports has allowed me to keep a healthy balance between school work and free time as well as de-stress and properly relax while keeping a healthy body and mind.

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CAS - Service 1 September/October

During the first two months of the school year I focused on the service section of CAS. My activity of choice was participating and co-organizing the 2SLO ib debate club as well as representing our high school in the Warsaw Debate League. During the proceedings of our club, we focused on educating our brand new recruits from PREDP1 and PREDP2. We began the process by providing the newcomers with lectures on the structure of Oxford Debates and the responsibilities of the different roles in a debating team. We focused primarly on the importance of the first and second speakers, who present the sides introduction to the topic and argumentation respectively. Once we provided the new members with enough basic information we moved on to mock debates on specially created by us topics, which I moderated. Overall we have made great progress in introducing a significant group of people to the world of debating and hopefully succesfully engaged them in the club for the rest of the year. The teaching process has also significantly increased our cohesion as a team.

When it comes to actually debating in the Warsaw Debating League, we participated in the first two rounds of the group stages against LO 43 and LO 17. We came back victorious from both of these endavours and curretly sit first in our group. We succesfully rotated our team to include less experienced members in the second debate which allowed one of the newcomers from PREDP1 to make their official debut. We made important headway in the area of time management. With every debate we seem to spend less and less time on preparation, yet the overall result is more and more satisfactory. This can be atributted to an increase in efficiency that comes with gaining experience and proper task distribution. An area that still requires some attention is provided even higher quality materials to new club members, however we will focus on this issue in the following months.

I devoted 1.5 hours weekly for the debating club and an additional 10 hours for the preparation process before the two official debates.