Chronicle April 2016

12 ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE

Creativity, Action, Service By Anna Fielding, CAS Coordinator

If you were given £50 and told you had a month to change the world what would you do? • Make tie-dye painting shirts for children attending an art therapy centre (below)? • Run a football tournament for Shells? • Make Sunday dinner and take it to homeless people? • Raise awareness of the amount of sugar in every day drinks? • Investigate the level of food wastage in School (right)? • Create an online social media campaign to encourage mental health awareness? Lower Sixth IB pupils decided to launch all these projects last month. Many might have found the prospect of being given free rein to carry out any Service project with very little guidance quite daunting. However in early March teachers were amazed at what had been achieved in only four weeks. Pupils’ work varied from giving presentations in assembly to mass producing tie-dye shirts, refereeing an excited group of Shells to learning how to cook 25 hot meals.

Whether they raised money or awareness all pupils excelled at overcoming the challenges they faced, setting themselves goals, meeting tough deadlines and working successfully in a group; all skills that underpin the IB course. Pupils commented that they enjoyed ‘being responsible - having the freedom to do it ourselves’. The month-long Service project forms

just one part of CAS, a core element of the IB that encourages pupils to think outside the classroom and beyond the textbook. Since starting the Diploma in September the Lower Sixth have completed over 12,000 hours of CAS, with nearly 3,000 of those being Service. They might not have changed the world in a month, but they’ve certainly had an impact.

The food waste team from left to right, Afiq Rozhan

( Papplewick ), Aaron Gruen

( Munich International ), Nathalie Roschmann ( Prior’s Field ),

Gleb Izmaylov ( Bishopstrow ), Maximilian Heil

( St Alban’s College, South Africa ) and Katie MacCrindle ( Swanbourne House ).

Anamika Pillai ( Sir James Henderson British School )