Spanish Tutoring (Service)

Starting tomorrow I will be tutoring a 10th grade Spanish student every Monday after school. With this activity I plan to attack two learning outcomes;

1. Undertaking New Challenges
2. Developing New Skills 

Spanish class has always been the class I have struggled in, but mostly when it comes to the oral component of speaking and holding a conversation in Spanish. One of my strong points has always been learning the rules to properly put a verb in its correct form of a specific tense. This is the primary focus of learning in MYP Spanish II. 

I plan to also incorporate a new skill into this by learning different and creative ways to learn Spanish  which can be categorized under creativity. Hopefully by helping another THS IB student I can help him increase his Spanish skills while not making it something that would put one to sleep.

Funds!

The legal process for SSS is going slower then I would like, but great news is the fact that I have the funds raised that I needed to go through the legal process to file the paperwork. How did I accomplish this? Through the Canvas and Coctails night. Each person who payed to go ($40) got to learn to paint the picture of the night and $10 dollars of each attendee went to SSS. I was a little disappointed that no teachers from school came to support me but there was a whole new crowd of people I could inform about SSS. 

All in all we $750!!! More than what we needed! So now I have the extra money to buy supplies for upcoming classes and events! That sounds so great! 

We also have another fundraiser this Sunday, the old fashion way; by doing a car wash! It is free with donations highly needed. I got the idea from my taekwondo, so I am happy to have all kinds of people involved to help the whole car wash in motion and make some more donation money!

SSS Taekwondo Addition

This is late, but never late then never. The Shimmer, Sparkle, Shine Event at my Teakwondo went great! I started promoting it a month before hand, and at first not alot of people signed up, making me really nervous. Last minute lots of girls signed up, and I was very excited. I wanted to make this a little different and incorporate TKD elements into the event, while still making it fun. To do this we discussed the Tenants of TKD in a fun way, and later on they played taekwondo games with out master. It was really cool because our volunteers got to try taekwondo, making them look silly which made the girls have lots of fun. When the day first started there was only 6 girls there, and that made me so nervous! I kept telling myself that it doesnt matter if I help one girls life, 6, or even 10000. Alot of girls called saying they were going to be late so we started the event later. Since I am big about being on time it was hard to shift plans, but it worked out for the best! They really enjoyed all the activities we had planned, but they really loved the boost books. This time the design was changed to make a few page prompts to get them thinking, then blank pages. Master Andre did a great pep talk, and they all enjoyed their gift bags! The girls also had a quick mini photo shoot with Carleigh in their uniforms doing taekwondo techniques. It was just so hard to fit all the girls in with quality photos.

Through this event I learned a few strengths and weaknesses on how to make it better for next time.

• Photo shoots take too long, and are so rushed. Plus getting the photos returned to the girls in a timely matter is difficult. I am not going to do this aspect in the future unless its for a small group of girls.
• Boost books are so essential to it all, and is something that the girls really enjoy and I must keep in.

In the end I accomplished what I wanted. All the girls walked away with a better sense of self worth and new techniques to help their confidence. In addition I opened up the communication barrier between myself and the middle school aged girls to see me as someone they can go to, which made nationals a blast. The younger girls still say Shimmer Sparkle Shine all the time, and keep asking if it will happen next summer. It was a great success. 

Nationals

I am proud to say I did a great job and had a great time at nationals! I did not place in the top 3 for a medal but I did great for my first time. I feel like I really accomplished my learning outcomes; which I would first like to discuss Collaborating Well With Others. I discussed how I really wanted to help out my team and be apart of the Teakwondo family, and be comfortable to get help from them and also help them in return. I did the fundraising to be apart of the team, and hard work of going there. My favorite was the car wash fundraiser. It was a nice contributing factor to the funds to go.

Along with this and camp I grew a connection to my team. I really felt like they were all there to support me, along with everyone else, and not think of our own teammates as competition. In Dallas at actual Nationals is where the aspect of the learning outcome really blossomed. Since my master was busy trying to help everyone and all over the place, we all helped each other. When I needed help on competition day my teammates held my boards for me and went over questions on my forms. We were all each others cheerleaders. I watched my team and cheered them on, even on days I didn't need to be there. When there was an adult meeting I watched all the children. All of the kids grew on me because I want to see them all do well because they have such great spirits, and I see their potential. I also bonded with the parents, and became friends with one of the moms at Teakwondo because she has a teenager spirit. I loved how this was accomplished, and how my heart grew for the team and the sport.

My second learning outcome was to Increase Awareness of Areas of Strength and Places for Growth. In my original goal of this process I stated finding room for growth in my forms from taking 2nd at state to taking a medal at nationals. I made goals to work on my L-stance and certain aggression of power, and balance for my form. To my dismay I found out that with only a week to learn and practice, my form I was to compete in changed. This freaked me out like no other, because I had to start from scratch. This really made me aware of my strengths and weaknesses for this form. I had a hard time with footage of using the left or right foot. Plus I had mind over matter, and my mind was psyching my out. I knew that my strengths were my facial expressions, hand techniques, and power. My weaknesses were of course balance and stances. I worked on this at home and in Dallas. I didn't place but I did learn my form and become aware of what was important to focus on in the short amount of time.

My other weak point I wanted to work on before nationals was my balance. I did this by working on WiiFit and trying this balance excersize at Teakwondo. We would work with the medicine balance balls. The goals progressed and got harder over time. We were supposed to be on our knees on the ball, hold ourselves up for a minute them do hang techniques. This progressed to doing a half frog and having one leg standing on the ball with the other leg flat and doing hand techniques. When I started I could even hold myself up with my legs, but then I stay focused and kept trying. By the end of the Teakwondo camp I could do the half frog for over a minute. I was very proud.

I feel like I accomplished my goals for this Action project, and I am very happy with it all!

TKD/Yoga

Nationals is so close! Only about a week away! It is really a scary thought, but an exciting one. Throughout getting ready and conditioning for nationals I have learned so much and pushed myself so much. I have really worked on identifying my strengths and weakness throughout the whole process. I have always said my balance was my weak point, so I started doing stretches at TKD to help. Over the past few weeks I have been doing balance conditioning with the bouncy workout balls. At first I could not even balance my knees on it holding on. Now I can do the half frog for over a minute! The balance really comes from my core muscles, it is like the saying that the center or "core" is important to everything else. My strengths of my confidence for board breaking has helped me improve my trying new challenging techniques to use in my board breaking routine in Dallas. I have also been doing my Wii Fit Yoga routines daily to also build my balance. That has really helped and has been something I stick to and do every day. (learning outcome) My other learning outcome for nationals of collaborating well with others has been great! I have really grown close to my teammates and master throughout this process. I like how we can be of all different ages and belt ranks, but we can still all help each other out and try to help the other succeed. During the past 3 weeks there was "national camp" during the day for 6 hours twice a week. It was so hard to push myself to limits I never thought possible, but I also made a stronger bond with my team. Having my master give me personal motivational feedback was awesome. Along with this I made a friend in TKD who really believes in me, and has faith in me, and helps me where I struggle. Both learning outcomes are great for me! And the YOGA project is still in progress. DALLAS HERE I COME!!

Some of us from the national workout camps during the day.

CTA!

Ciara Neill

Taekwondo Update

Nationals are vastly approaching, and let me tell you, it is WAY harder then I thought it would be! I have been training so much trying to make attending classes a regular habit, and working on my weaknesses. Due to my lack of balance I learned that I have to work really hard on my core muscles, so I have been really doing stretches focused around that. For my goal of collaboration with others, I really wanted to get to know my team at CTA so that I have a strong support system and so I know how to support them. Is is also important knowing how to work with others when it comes to critique to only improve yourself. This is becoming really evident as I come up with my board breaking routine, and hear constructive critism. Almost Nationals!

SSSP Taekwondo Addition

Event two for Shimmer Sparkle Shine Project (SSSP) is for May 26th at my teakwondo, and I have mentioned already. Some changes to the activity scheduled is the craft time for the "About Me Brochures" I was thinking, and I really like the aspect of the boost books on how they can add things to them later to keep on using in and with the brochure they can't do that. When doing research on other activities I found out that Girl Scouts has a self esteem campaign too filled with resources. They suggested that each girl do a book about them where they do five pages, each page being different, about what makes me unique or special. I loved that idea, because I could put extra pages in it for the boost book part of it too. I want them to be able to put the quotes and resources we give to them somewhere. In the program there is also going to be a point where the younger girls are divided from the older girls. The younger girls are going to do an activity where a story is read, and each time something mean is done to "samantha" then they rip a piece of paper off (the paper is a picture of "sam"). Then if something good is said they tape a piece back on. The idea is that you can fix the things you do to people, but the damage will be forever there. The older girls will be focused on the media's impact to what we consider beautiful. We will go over facts, and how the media photoshops images. Then they will be put to the test to use propaganda to sell a clothing line to women, while making sure it doesn't negatively shape the girls who want to "buy" the product. They day is quickly approaching and I can't wait. Ciara