Basketball club (5th week)

It is already the 5th week that we started running the club. To evaluate overall performance basketball club so far :

1) Does not have many people (7 people came) 

 >Advantage: people can play and develop their own skills more freely and they actually prefer a small match on half court rather than 5:5 full court. 

 >Disadvantage: we may not achieve the primary aim for running the club 

2) 2 weeks ago we realised that we did not have a supervisor who can ensure safety of students and we now got Mr.Coach as a supervisor 

 > Thursday lunch basketball club indeed started at 1:30, but now it starts at 1:45 as Mr.Coach comes to the gym after eating lunch. This may dissatisfy some members, but we cannot adjust start time to their want, because the supervisor also needs to have lunch. Anyway now club is run under the official permission and with presence of the supervisor. 

3) I have run the club with y12 friends but one of them Haesik left to Korea. He was an important member, because he was one of us running the club and actually the best player in the club who was really good at shooting. I felt his absence was quite big. However we will run the club before this term break 

 Today personal performance

I can say that today my shooting was best since we ran the basketball club. However I think I should practice lay-up more, because I was often blocked by Takuto. Also I realised that my defense needs to be improved, because I often missed marking Takuto and he scored a lot today. 

Continued basketball club (3rd week)

 Today 4 people came to the club, so total 7 people including us. 2 people were ones who came to the club last time and one person did not play basketball often. However we did not spend time training him, because first he actually wanted to have a match rather than boring training and he was good enough not to get special training. However, we needed to explain some rules that he didn't know, which was not a big deal.

 Since the number of members was not even, we should divide teams into 3 and 4. Although the number was unbalanced, it was not an unfair game, because the team with 3 people had a really good powerforward who is good at post-up. And unlike Wednesday basketball club, people should keep running around without subtitution and everyone felt that they were lack of stamina. However, we all agreed that if we keep playing basketball in a regular term, we will see our stamina getting better.

 The club is still not so popular at school. To reflect it, it is not still successfully achieving the primary purpose to get people who want to play basketball. However, this may be not becuase people don't know about the club, but people just have other stuffs to do. And today 2 more people came and they were satisfied with today match and the club running regularly that they can play basketball. If we gather more people, then we would play in a full court and make a constant team to improve cooperation skills and make people more motivated to win the game (but now they are eager enough).
> What the club needs to improve
-  gather more peopl who want to play basketball.

 To reflect my personal performance, I didn't count my scores but it was better than last time. I think it was because I now got the feeling how to play it and I actually practiced shooting for few minutes before the real match and this helped me to have better shooting rate today. And I prefers shooting than lay-up and I noticed that there was no shooting guard who can score at three point boundary. If I practice 3point shot then it would contribute to team and bring fulfillment in my short amateur baketball career :)
Personal aim
- should pass accurately. I often do bound pass, but it often didn't work
- should practice three point shot for being unique in the club :)!

 

The First day of running club

 As soon as we ate lunch, we went to the gym which was empty during Thursday lunch time. This time only 3 people came to the club. Including I and my friends who run the club, there were total 5 people. It was a small number of people, but we still could divide the team into 2 and do 3:3 match. We were not professionl basketball players, but we planned to teach some basic skills like lay-up and how to shoot properly (using finger snap). But people who joined the club this time were all experienced basketball players who actually have played basketball together in Wednesday club. So we could run the club without any difficulties or new experience, for example explaining basic rules of basketball like travelling or up and down.

 To make a self evaluation I didn't play basketball for few weeks, so it was quite awkward even to grasp a basketball again. I mispassed a lot and especially missed good chance or timing to pass that could be directly linked to goals. Also my shooting was horrible. Since there was no refree, we needed to keep counting scores and I knew how many shoots I took and missed, which was 4 out of 10. My personal perfomance was not really good, but 3:3 match seemed to help to use some skills that were difficult to use 5:5 match. For example, we could more often use screen play and one two pass that are useful to drive in.

 To evalate the first day of running club, only few people came to play basketball, so we might need to raise awarness of the prescence of the club by telling other people in different year groups. But if only few people come to basketball club, then we can focus on improving personal skills and train some beginners if they come and still number of members is small. And we need some control to manage people if more people join the club. 

Running Basketball club on Thursday lunch (Project)

 Probably I have posted many things about basketball. On every wednesday I played basketball in a school club and reflected my performance and tried to improve my weaknesses. I regularly played it in y12, but since becoming y13 who should focus on studying,  I could not play as much as last year and can't play further in afterschool club because I needed to focus on preparing mock exams and really need to study hard for the real IB exams coming on May.

 And after I face a situation that I can't remain at school for a basketball club, I can now understand some people who want to join afterschool club, but can't for personal reasons. There were some y12 students who were planning to make a basketball club during Thursday lunch time and I thought it was a good idea to join it and actually not only play as a member, but run the club together with y12 friends. This club actually took an ethical consideration, because there was a girls' basketball club running on Tuesday, but there was no basketball club for boys who wanted to play basketball at school. And if we run a club on Thursday lunch, boys who can't come to afterschool club, but who love basketball can play. The club will be open from next week and probably will end by the end of this half term, but not exactly decided.

This is going to be my project for CAS which covers both action and service and needs cooperation with others (running a club with y12s and playing basketball with people coming)
 By running this Thursday basketball club I would like to achieve:

>  Providing service to students who want to play basketball
>  Increased awarness of strengths and areas of growth ( for example how to run a club efficinently
>  Undertaken new challenge (becaus I have never run a club!)
>  Work collaberately with others
>  Considered ethical implications of actions (running a basketball club for boys)

Halloween Canteen

 Planning 

On 31st of October, we will have a Halloween disco after school where people can dress up with Halloween costumes and dance in the hall. I wasn't directly involved in organising the disco, but I was planning to set up a little cafe

to sell food for this. The profits the cafe will make will be used for a charity. We had 5 people to set up the cafe and the menu we thought of were sushi and Korean traditional food called Sam gak Kim bob(foreigners call this Triangles as it has a triangle shape), because foreigners especially Russian in the school seem to love it. We also added toasts in menu, as they were simple ones which we could easily cook and sell. The price for each menu was a bit higher than the standard, since the aim of this was to make as much profits as possible for the charity. The day before the disco, we decided not to sell Sushi, because we were not really confident to make it and didn't have a refrigerator to save raw fish. We bought 36 bread, ham and cheese for toasts and made 60 triangles which were 20 more than the previous plan as we put Sushi off in the list.

Service (Selling food)/ Charity (global issue) 

One of the worrying things on this day was we made too many triangles compared to people who would remain for the disco. So we decided to start to sell them just after school, so people going back home could also buy some. We couldn't sell all of them, but many people bought them and the remain was only about 5. Teachers and many students left the feedback that they really liked it.  As I was the one who was selling triangles, I felt so fulfilled and great.  For toasts, 36 was not enough, so we went to buy more, but bought too much and had to leave some as people didn't buy as much as we bought. However, in total we made a lot of profits which was about 5500 rubles and this will go for the charity.

About the Charity

Not only my group, but others also collected money from such things as tickets for disco and mini backery during lunch time. The money we have collected is about 40000 rubles which can help weakers of the society a lot. We first consdiered to send all the money for the homeless people. It is good to help people who wander around because there is nowhere to go, but to some extent some homeless people lose their home because of their fault(such as gambling, debt). Therefore, we decided to send some money, not all to them. The remained will be used for helping disabled children. I always think that I am such a lucky person as I am given a good environment to study and have no problem physically. However, some children at my age or even much younger have difficulties in their lives because of physical handicap they had. We wanted to give some hope and opportunities to these little people who should have hope for their lives, with the money we collected.

sign language

(Service&Creativity)

On 20th of October, it was thanks giving day and we anually celebrate it in the church that I go to.  In the chruch there are largely four departments and each department has to prepare something to express thanks for what we are given. What we usually do is singing, but this time we did something fresh that wasn't done before - sign language on music 'You Raise me up'. We watched the video on youtube and tried to imitate it. I realised that my hands were not flexible at all and compared to girls my actions seemed to be awkward. Also I always got wrong at confusing parts, so I really practised a lot not to make mistakes on the real stage.
We had only 2 weeks to prepare this and time we actually met together to practice was only 2 days as everyone had busy schedules. All of us were quite good as we practiced individually at home, but the problem was that we played on different tempos. One of the most important things was that we had to synchronize our actions on the right tempo of the music.  So for the last time we met, we really practiced a lot to have a good teamwork.

On the real stage, it was successful. Since the day was between the half-term exam, I couldn't balance the time to practice sign language and study school subjects. Also this was the first time I tried  Sign language, but I practiced a lot and managed to do it quite successfully. Honestly, while practicing, we were weary due to long practice, but we felt really great on the real stage, seeing few people moving to tears.

International Day

Service

 On international day, year 12 made different kinds of activities that can entertain young kids like we did last year and we as year 13 organised the day. So many people did lots of works and as a result the day went amazing. I didn't take such a big important role, but I took year 11b and make sure they participate in activities. As they were not so young,they could control themselves and didn't do ridiculous things. However, when the activities were not interesting to them, they just talked to each other and showed rude behavior to a person who prepared an activity, but generally there was no big problem.  And the day before, year 13 helped to set up the gym for a talent show. I thought it would take quite a long time to move stuffs and organise the gym, but we did it in a blink of an eye. And this year we have changed the formation of the stage. For several years, the stage was set at the corner of the gym, which was very uncomfortable to watch for the audience, but this time, it positioned on the middle and parents could watch performances much more comfortably.

 As I always feel on international day, it is the most enjoyable school day in a year and this is possible, because many people put efforts and cooperate to organize one day and participants also eagerly participate in . After few months, I will graduate from this school, but never forget the amazing memories I had as a participant and an organiser on this great day which show well why this school is 'international'.

Creativity (performance on international day )


 Last year, I played the guitar in the band called High Five, but as some members left to their countries the band was disbanded, so I didn't think of performing this year. A week before International day, Yarrubi and David asked me to perform together. First I thought of turning it down, because I am not such a good player and I was afraid of ruining thier performance. But I accepted to do it and the song we chose was Emeli sande-breaking the law. Fortunately, the song was just consisted of the repetition of four chords. But the fingering part was quite difficult for me to do, so I changed it easier to play. Also, I gave some varieties in guitar strokes to harmonise with David's beat box. Actually last year, when I played the guitar in the band, the guy who played the first guitar always helped me a lot on every song and I played the guitar passively according to what he told me. The song was not difficult, but this time it was a personal challenge and achievement to play the guitar by myself without helps.  We have practiced hard for a week during every lunch time. We all were so nervous before our turn, but we enjoyed it and it was successful!