Resilience:
For the resilience reflection, I did some tasks related to mindfulness (such as mindfulness eating, gratitude activity, etc.) These activities helped me reflect on daily tasks that I’ve never paid attention to before and made me feel really calm while I was doing it. Other than these activities, I also created a vision board. Throughout the process, I became more clear about my strengths, my goals, my hobbies/what I enjoyed doing. It helped me not just reflect on the present situation, but I also had more ideas about what to do in the near future, and the objectives/goals that I will try to tackle over the next few months. Through these tasks in general, I have learnt why resilience is such an important skill in life and it is crucial for every career or simple tasks that we need to do. It’s not simply about being able to bounce back from challenges, but more importantly about having awareness of our environment and having a deep sense of gratitude for everything in our lives. It taught me about being mindful of my surroundings, and to appreciate things and never just take things for granted. This is a lesson that I will carry with me and remember throughout my life.
Critical Thinker:
For the Critical thinker tasks, I did tasks 13, 14, and 15. I played a game called “Gomuku or nim” with my classmate, ranked the importance of bringing different objects with me when getting stuck in an area in the survival game, and chose 20 words that is the most needed when communicating in Wordplay. Firstly, I think the survival game really challenged me to prioritize based on utility and necessity, and it really emphasizes the importance of resource management. As a person who has trouble making decisions sometimes, this task helps me learn about the importance of making choices effectively, but also being able to make quick decisions sometimes when we are faced with urgent situations. Secondly, by selecting the 20 most essential words for effective communication helped me understand how ideas can be expressed clearly. Again, I needed to prioritize words that are used a lot, or are essential to express needs (such as hunger, thirst, etc.). This challenegd me to think about if we could only have 20 words, which ones matter the most. Overall, I think these tasks all helped me make more efficient decisions and challenged me to think not only carefully but also quickly.
Creativity:
For creativity, I designed a book cover, created a T-shirt design, and performed a dance piece and had my dance teacher record me doing it. For the book cover activity, I designed a new book cover for the book we were reading in English class called “Clap When You Land”. I decided to incorporate many elements from this book into the cover. Firstly, I included the flags of the United States and Dominican Republic to represent the 2 areas the sisters were in. I decided to place the plane in the middle as the plane crashed on its way from the United States to the Dominican Republic. Secondly, I included my favorite quote from the book which is: “Fight until you can’t breathe, & if you have to forfeit, you forfeit smiling, make them think you let them win.” This quote is symbolic to the book (specifically the character Yahaira), and it taught me a lesson about the importance of never showing that you are losing to an opponent or losing control over something. I think this activity really helped me reflect on the plot, setting, and characters of this book at a deeper level, and helped me understand the book more.
Communication:
For the effective communicator TTG, I did multiple presentations. One of which is the PPT I presented to students from a rural area in Henan for one of the clubs that I am involved in. The students I am teaching are students who are really passionate about dance, but do not have the local resources to learn dance at a studio. The lesson covers an introduction to myself, a description of the styles that we are studying and how they are unique from other styles, a warm up, and a dance combination. During the lessons, we covered ballet and contemporary ballet as 2 major dance styles, and it truly feels rewarding to come up with dance combinations and let them experience the fun and happiness I experience while dancing. This also helped me grow as a better communicator as these students were a lot younger than me, so I had to think of ways to help them understand the movements by describing it as, for example, “drawing a rainbow in the sky”, or “touching the clouds”, etc. The students were really engaged and focused throughout the lesson, which makes me feel really proud. I hope they can continue loving dance and be willing to further explore in this area!
Collaboration:
Out of the collaboration tasks that I did, I think I really enjoyed solving the silent murder mystery with my classmates. The rules were that we couldn’t talk with each other but we could only share clues with each other. We decided to create a word document where we could type in the clues we found and make sense of it by separating it into different categories of the the suspects, and then connecting the clues to think of a possible process in which the killer kills the victim, and analyze different motivations that exists. Eventually, we successfully found the killer.
I think this was a really engaging and fun activity, but it was also challenging in terms of working together with my teammates to find the person who committed the crime. It practiced my ability to connect dots and analyze clues (that, sometimes, could be misleading purposely). We were also able to think outside the box and think of ways that we can communicate without physically talking, which was using a word document and communicating through typing.
Science Project:
Although the science project just started, I think it is already helping grow with many of the skills included in the TTG’s. Firstly, it is helping me grow as a more effective collaborator. I am learning about how to communicate with my teammates, and how to efficiently share/listen to ideas. This is also helping me grow independently, as now it is more important to manage my time wisely so that we can finish our work in time. Secondly, it is helping me grow as a creative learner as I think this will be a great way to learn about concepts by directly using it to do a project such as building a car. This will help us learn multiple concepts effectively and efficiently. After analyzing our kryptonite and strengths, I think our team strength is putting ideas on the table, but our main kryptonite is time management/procrastination. Our common villain is when people are overly bossy and don’t do the work. Currently, we haven’t started building the drag race car yet, but we have learnt some principles (such as Newton’s first law and second law) I’m excited to see what we can build as a team by using these principles!
Extracurricular:
For extracurriculars, I’ll write about dance as I am doing a lot of dancing outside of school, and I am exploring dance in multiple styles as well, such as ballet and contemporary dance. I love dancing and it makes me really happy to perform pieces that we rehearsed for. Recently, I’ve performed at a ballet recital, LNY assembly, and Perform to Transform. Perform to transform is a fundraising event, and all money raised from this event is donated to hospitals here in Shanghai. It feels truly rewarding to perform knowing that you are making a positive change and helping those in need.
Other than performing dance, I also really like teaching dance to younger students. Last semester, I taught dance to students in Henan, who are all passionate about dance but do not have the local resources to go to a studio to learn dance. Although they are all much younger than us, they are exceptionally attentive whenever we give them directions and they are always smiling while they dance. Seeing them being happy and so focused during class warms my heart and makes me really proud of them.
I love dancing and I hope I’ll enjoy dancing throughout high school!
