Hello :)
It's been a while...
So far my CAS has been going pretty well.
For Thursday's activity, we've had the kids in school 4 times now, of which I missed one. We haven't shifted from playing football just yet, but want to do so soon. In the course of this activity, I've taken on a leadership role, determining the exercises we do with the kids, taking the lead in the warm-up and stretching, etc. During the first session, we played a game of football with all of the kids, just to see where they stand in terms of their skill and what we need to work on. After this, we were aware of the fact that we had kids with ranges of all sorts of skills, some of them were very good, others could barely kick a ball. What I proposed to do after that, was to split up the bigger kids and smaller kids and work with two different groups, seeing as there was a huge difference in physical appearance as well as skill. The others agreed, so I spent one session practicing shooting skills on a traveling ball and one session on corners and crosses. I've tried to make the players communicate with each other, which isn't always the easiest thing to do, since they don't understand much English and we only have one Sri Lankan in our group, but I feel like they're starting to get the hang of it. The kids seem to be having fun and developing their skills rather quickly, they've lost their shyness towards us already and aren't scared to try and communicate even without being able to speak English very well. In the rest of this year, we should be able to get other sports teams in on Thursdays as well, we should be getting a basketball group next, which means that I'll probably let Filippo take the lead, since he's the basketball player in our group.
A while ago, Grace approached and asked me to have some private coaching sessions for football with her, because she really wanted to make the girls' team this year. I gladly agreed, so we had sessions on Mondays and Wednesdays after school. We worked on simple ball handling skills, passing, some shooting and crossing, but also on how to hold a ball and defend it against attackers. My goal for those sessions was to get Grace to be on the traveling team for SAISA.
At one of the sessions, the coach of the girls' team asked me to come in and help him to coach the girls' team during the week, because he'd seen me work with Grace. I agreed, setting myself the goal of helping to improve the girls' techniques with the ball and making them more confident on the field, but also to improve my own coaching skills, since I'd never coached such a big group of girls (around 20). So far I've had roughly over 10 sessions with the girls, helping them out as a group and individually, trying to develop their skills on the ball. I've been following the instructions that coach Shipley has given me, demonstrated exercises and walked around the field, helping the girls improve. It's been very fun so far and I've seen girls improve hugely. In terms of myself being a coach, I've turned out to be a rather strict one, shouting out advice on the field and really pushing people to their very max, which I think is good, because the girls need to get used to the pressure of SAISA games, since some of them have never been in one. Last week, the selection of the traveling 16 was made, and I was very glad to find out that Grace made the team, which means the first of my CAS goals for this year has been fulfilled.
Every second Wednesday morning, we have electives in our school. I joined the Wall Climbing Elective, with the intention of overcoming my fear of heights. In order to do so, I want to climb the top of the wall at least once, no matter how hard it may seem. I've never done wall climbing before, so this was a new experience for me. As of last week's Wednesday, I made it to the top of the wall, which made me very happy. That means that I've therewith fulfilled my goal for wall climbing, which will not hinder me from putting effort into climbing the top of some of the harder parts of the wall.
Our band practices are going well so far, we still practice together, but probably won't be presenting in school anytime soon. We were supposed to perform for the UN Day, representing the European countries, but one day before the event we were kicked out, because, apparently, we were "just loud noise" and "little kids were getting bored". Maybe that was just because we hadn't had a sound check yet, and because we were the very last group to rehearse during the dress rehearsal, which means the kids had sat there for more than two hours already. But ah well, you never know, right? That performance would've meant the fulfillment of my goal for the band, but now I'm actually very much against performing in school, because we were kicked out of our performance very rudely and I don't see why we should be begging the school for another performance, when they're the ones who should be glad that there are musicians in our school who are willing to play. Too bad.
I've talked to some of the officials of DAWG, who now want me to join the elective already, which I'll have to discuss with the responsible teacher, Ms Wolff. I hope that I'll be able to switch from wall climbing, because that would mean that I could already start working with the group of kids that is in that elective, but also help out the seniors, since there's only two of them and they're handling a group that purely consists of 6th graders. My goal for DAWG would be to continue working towards a sterilization and maybe help set up a step-by-step plan on how to achieve exactly that, which would help whoever would be taking over the elective after me.
Cya ^^
