MICHELLE CHAN

CAS PORTFOLIO King George V School, Hong Kong | IB Diploma 2015 - 2017

[michelle-cas]

UNICEF Club Facebook Page

This is my second year in the KGV UNICEF Club. This year I was in charge of our Facebook page to keep the school informed with our club UNICEF Hong Kong’s activities.

It was challenging to constantly keep this page updated throughout the year because I had to take my own initiative. I think I could have done better because there were many lengths of hiatuses throughout the school year where I didn’t post anything for a few weeks.

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24Hr Pedal Cart Charity Race

Nov. 12 - Nov. 13, 2016

This was the first time I’ve participated in the Pedal Kart Race, and also the first time I’ve ever ridden a Pedal Kart. I’ve discovered that this is a new skill I’m not particularly talented in, therefore wasn’t able to excel for my team. Despite this, I still found this a fun learning experience. As I’m not a sporty person, this was definitely a challenge  for me to stay motivated and persevere throughout the race.

[michelle-cas]

Interhouse Knitting

Sept. - Nov. 2016

This is an annual event organized by the KGV Charity Committee in which the school houses compete to knit the most blankets. Each blanket is 6x24 squares, and each square is 40 stitches. Because I am not a strong knitter, I had challenged myself just to beat my record from previous years of 10 squares. However, this year I had only been able to knit 9 squares. Although I’m still glad that this was a large improvement from last year, where I only knitted 6 squared.

On my last square, I actually ran out of orange wool. I used my initiative to use left over red wool from previous years in order to complete the square.

These blankets are taken by students to a variety of impoverished destinations during Challenge Week (Oct. 12 - 18). This has opened my character up to the global issue of poverty which occurs all over the world.

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School Musical

Aug - Dec 2016

This year’s school musical was Guys and Dolls. 

Although I am very interested in theatre, musical theatre is not really my strong suit because I don’t have much musical talents. Because this year’s cast is a bit smaller than past musicals I’ve participated in, it really allowed me take on a bigger role in self-awareness of my skills.

[michelle-cas]

Osaka, Japan Trip

Dec 28 - 31, 2015

This trip was organized in joint with the Hong Kong Rotary Council and multiple Interact Clubs in Hong Kong. Being an overseas activity, there were many challenges I faced, including obtaining legal documents and coordination between teachers, students and parents. One thing that was particularly challenging was finding a last minute replacement when one of our KGV students pulled out of the trip suddenly. 

The most difficult part of this experience was the collaborative work I, as the KGV Interact Club President, had to complete with the Rotary Council and other HK Interact Club members. This was mainly because they most comfortably spoke Cantonese, while my own Cantonese is not as strong or fluent. Also, it was difficult to pull my share of organizing the trip as I was starting a new term as school while the Interact Club members from other schools were still on their summer holiday, thus had more time.

[michelle-cas]

HK YAF ‘Pull Back the Curtain’ Youth Playwriting Program

Feb. - May 2016

This is a youth playwriting course that was free of charge, but I did have to apply and send in a sample of my writing. This experience was a complete challenge for me because I had never tried to properly write a script at all before! Therefore, there were many new skills I learned, such as how to create character, atmosphere, etc. Being a HL Theatre student, I had learned how to interpret these things from other people’s writing and performances but had I had to create these all myself.

The final piece was a solo writing piece, so I have to initiate my ideas to my mentor Clare Stearns individually. I recognized that writing for the stage may be a strength of mine as my script ended up to be chosen for performance! 

[michelle-cas]

HuaiJi, China Trip

Dec 28 - 31, 2015

This was the largest project yet for the KGV Interact Club, a trip to Huaiji Secondary School. Being the first overseas trip for KGV’s Interact Club, there were many challenges I faced, including obtaining legal documents and coordination between teachers, students and parents. Although official rules were difficult to understand, I was able to lead our team into a successful and enjoyable trip. We had no qualification to mentor the students we visited, but their respect and gratitude towards us surprised me, which was humbling. I was engaged in the global issue of the English Language, as I saw how much of an importance these students seemed to emphasize it.

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Refugee Computer Course

This activity was a completely new experience for me as I’ve never taught anyone ICT skills before nor have worked closely with refugees. New skills that I’ve developed in this process if more patience, as the collaborative  learning process can be tiresome and may require a lot of perseverance. 

One major obstacle I had to overcome was the language barrier. As majority of our clients did not speak English as their first language, it was a times very difficult for them to communicate with us. It required a lot of patience on both of our parts in order for us to move forward and help our clients develop useful ICT skills.

As an ethical consideration, I have not posted any photographs of our clients on any forms of social media without their consent, in order to protect their confidentiality. Additionally, I became aware of the global significance of a refugee’s lifestyle as I was sometimes able to speak with them one on one about their lives. I learnt that it is not quite what is pictured in the media as it can be sometimes deceiving.

[michelle-cas]

KGV Interact Club

This year I’ve bee elected the Interact Club President. With this role, my jobs include overseeing all aspects, liasing with Ms. Kadri, Rotarians and other organizations, and responsibility over meeting agendas.

As this a still a very new club at our school, one of the challenges I had been faced with was reforming the club. As a founding board member from last year, I understood that we had not been able to reach our full potential of the club. I also learned the importance of collaborative work, as we didn’t work as a efficient team last year.

This year, I had to initiate more as the new President, but also show more commitment and perseverance in order to motivate the rest of my team. 

Although we were not 100% successful in our aims to fully reform the club and have two major events a year, I believe it was an improvement from last year and hopefully next year will be even better.

[michelle-cas]

IB Film Project

March - May 2016

I helped my friends Seya and Thea with their IB Film Project as an actor. For this task, I showed a much perseverance and commitment and it was a long period of time and for long hours at a time as well. 

Additionally, I was able to offer my strength of drama skills as I am a HL Theatre student and they are partially graded on the acting style. However, acting on film was a new skill that I had to learn as I had never been a part of a film before. All the acting I had done previously was for the stage. In the end, I was able to work collaboratively with the team and give a proud performance with the advice and feedback I received. 

The first video is a time lapse of a sit down reading session of the script. The second video was a practice of some shots without in proper costume. This was only a draft. 

[michelle-cas]

Hair Donation Drive

March - April 15, 2016

This was an event I helped to initiate on behalf of the CSC, where we help to raise money for the Hong Kong Anti-Cancer Society and UK’s Little Princess Trust. We also collect hair donations for the Little Princess Trust. The first picture shown is of the powerpoint I created to present during assembly and promote our event. In organizing this event, we also had to recognize the ethic choices of our volunteers who were donating hair. Thus we made sure to get their written and verbal consent before any of the donations happened. This also occured when we posting their “before and after” photos on our Facebook page. We made sure not to post any photos or videos without consent. 

With this event, I actually became aware of my own strengths as one to keep order during the actual chaotic event of the hair cutting (we held some actual hair cuttings at school). I was able to help organize our volunteers and help groom their hair and mark where to cut, etc.

Additionally, by researching the two organization we sponsored, I became more aware of the global significance of cancer and how it can really happen to anyone and anywhere in the world. 

[michelle-cas]

SKH Music Cafe

March 18, 2016

This event is held monthly but I this was my first time participating. This event is a musical event where students devise a music set list for a small concert for local children. 

This was a new challenge for me because I am not particularly musically talented so I haven’t really sung in front of a large crowd before. However, I was a risk taker with this new experience. I also had to work collaboratively with a few friends as we were singing in a small group, and not as solos. I became aware that one weakness we all seemed to have was communication for time management. What I meant by this was that we didn’t arrange enough time for us all to practice together, thus our performance wasn’t to the best of our abilities.

[michelle-cas]

SKH Children’s Birthday Party

January 26 - February 27, 2016

This is another activity that I’ve already participated in the past, were we initiate and plan a birthday part for local children.

One challenge that I had was working with new people, as they were not the same group of people that I had worked with last time and I hadn’t been friends with them at the start of the process. In the end, I was able to work collaboratively with them to produce an event where everyone seemed to have a great time. I also became aware of the global issue of low income families, especially in Hong Kong as the children we provided the party for all were from public housing estates. Even though our budget for the party was very limited, everyone still seemed to have a great time, which taught me that sometimes simplicity was enough!

The second photo shown i the birthday card that we made for the children, which I had been in charge of making.

[michelle-cas]

HKSSF Football Match

January 21, 2016

This was our third football match for the KGV Girls team, we won 5 - 0. After winning all three games, this puts us at the top in qualifying for the next round.

From the past few months of training, I have learnt that my strongest position is defence but I need to work on spacing in order to retrieve the ball when my teammates are surrounded towards our end of the pitch. 

Most of my teammates were in the team as well from the years before, but there were three new members from year 7. It was fun to work collaboratively with them and discover their individual strengths together.

At this game in particular, it tested our abilities to persevere as our opposing team was starting to become more aggressive towards the end of the game. As many of our members are quite small, it was easy for the opposing members to play roughly towards them. In the end we were able to collaboratively encourage each other to commit to the rules and play fairly.

[michelle-cas]

Elderly Home Visit

Dec. 19, 2015

This was another elderly visit that I attended. There were not many new challenges like I have written about in previous posts of my Elderly Home Visits since I was volunteering at HKSKH, which is the organization I normally work with.

One new skill I did have to do is recognize the ethical choices being made. This time I challenged myself to notice the ethical actions the elderly were taking, and to warn them of the effects it may have on themselves and their health. For example, I saw that one elderly woman we visited had not cleaned her windows for a long period of time. I recognized this issue and offered her to sign up for SKH’s cleaning services as the bacterial grow from her windows could have effected her health.

[michelle-cas]

Christmas Refugee Party

Oct. 19 - Dec. 12, 2015

This party is an annual event that runs at our school. This year was the first year where I had a larger role in planing the event as I was a member of the CSC. I was in charge of the activities. This meant that my team and I had to initiate creative games, organize the materials needed and plan a game timetable (pictured above).

For this event, the CSC worked together with the Charity Committee, thus I became more aware of my personal weaknesses such as communication. I learnt that I am not the best communicator as it was difficult to get my whole team on the same page and have all our needs met on time. Additionally, this collaboration was a challenge because the systems of our two committees are quite different so there was a lot of confusion at times but in the end we were able to work collaboratively to produce an event where everyone had a lot of fun! Lastly, I also became more openminded about the global significance of refugees, as I hadn’t really realized that there were a large population of refugees in Hong Kong. I had the chance to speak to some parents at the party and they all seemed very appreciative of our event, some even spoke to me about their struggles they were facing at home.

[michelle-cas]

Theatre Festival

Oct. 19 - Nov. 27, 2015

Here are a few pictures from rehearsals and performances in the Theatre Festival 2015, ‘Maisha’. Our piece is a collaboratively devised piece inspired by ‘Years’ by Bartholomaus Traubeck, “‘Maisha’ attempts to explore and physicalize the journey of life. A journey that is shared by all living creatures conscious or not and yet one which is unique and intensely personal to the traveller.”

From this experience I was able to identify my own strengths as a co-director. I was one of the older students in the cast so my ideas were widely heard and used. This gave me more confidence in my creative ideas. As an area for growth,  I need to try and communicate my ideas more effectively to my team. The biggest challenge throughout this project was working past my insecurity of performing such an abstract and ambiguous piece, because it is usually not accepted by everyone. Because of this, I sometimes doubted my ideas and performance. Lastly, I had to show commitment throughout a long period of time and excitement to work with collaboratively. I really enjoy group work, so I think that part was quite easy for me.