The community service initiative spanned over three weeks, comprising a total of six sessions held within the school, attended by students from various government schools of the locality. I had volunteered to to teach dance lessons to the participants, choreographed by other fs students, helping them out with student management and teaching the dance to a particular set of students, the program unfolded across three consecutive weekends. Engaging in this experience was immensely fulfilling. Observing the enthusiasm among the learners with each session was truly gratifying. Witnessing the latent talent inherent in each aspiring dancer was exhilarating, particularly as someone passionate about dance. This experience covers the strand of ‘service’ in CAS.

LO-2 Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills.

One thing that was quite challenging throughout this whole experience was communication barrier, as a non gujarati speaker, and considering that all the students who had come to learn, knew gujarati quite well, I had difficulty communicating with them in context of areas for development, where they were going wrong and teaching them the right steps, however, over the course of 2 weeks, I had learnt how to get my message through so that they understand.

secondly, getting these kids to open up and actually feel comfortable in the evironment was another challenge, in order to be able to dance freely and with confidence, one needs to be comfortable, however, for this we did an ice breaking session, talking to them about how we ourselves are new to dance, how we ourselves are students and here to talk, be friends and teach them, eventually, they got quite comfortable around us and waved us a goodbye, remembered our names, smiled at us, played around, all of this was very heart filling and contenting.

Another challenge faced was- getting them to able to dance in a synch, since all the kids had their own pace of learning and their own moves, it was difficult to get them to dance with co ordination, however we made sure that all of them were on the same page and repeated the same steps over and over again to make sure that they learn it very well.
overall, all the little challenges faced were overcomed, and it was necessary to do so in order to be able to perform a good dance in the end, which we did, in front of all the fs students and the other kids from other schools.

LO-4 Show perseverance and commitment in CAS experience

This programme spanned over 3 weeks, comprising of 6 sessions in total, each held on a weekend, 3 hours each session. Every weekend it was from 10-1, which included sacrificing my study hours and weekend. But, since it wasn’t right before examinations, it was easier for me to commit to this. Usually, if I set my mind and condition myself to a routine, it is easy for me to stay persistent and commit to things, hence, it wasn’t as difficult for me to stay consistent within the course of 3 weeks.

LO- 5 Demonstrate skills and benefits of working collaboratively.

This event and final dance wouldn’t have been successful without collaborative effort and time put by each one of us, it wasn’t difficult for me to work with others at all, In fact, the dance was choreographed by 4 fs students, and other volunteers had to learn the dance on day and teach them to other students, each volunteer was assigned with a particular set of students and had to teach them the dance, the collaboration was necessary so that each student learns it perfectly, and attention is paid to everyone equally, choreography on 3 songs was done. On the last day we performed the dance in front of other fs students and students from other schools, the dance overall turned out to be very beautiful, it wouldn’t have been possible without the collaborative efforts put.