Peace Cadre was one of the CAS activities that was mainly focused on the strand of service with some creativity. Peace cadre was a form of student supervision given by the students of the 11th grade to those of younger grades where any issue related to discipline and behavior was resolved. In this activity, I along with one of my classmates, had to make sure 3 sections of the 9th grade (60 students) are well behaved and that a healthy environment was always maintained.

In this, I achieved LO1 since peace cadre made me realize my strengths and weaknesses as an intermediary between the teachers and students as well as a leader who helps the students understand their mistakes. Initially I thought that only giving warnings would help solve the issues in the classes, however as the issues persisted I resorted to having one-on-one conversations with students and sometimes also involving the teachers.

I also achieved LO2 where I overcame the challenge of getting through to the students. During our first few visits, the children never took us or their own peace cadre leaders seriously, however I tackled the challenge by taking strict actions such as going to the higher authorities. This caused them to understand the gravity of the situation and in the next few visits we we found better responses.

Another LO achieved was LO4 where I constantly had to show commitment and perseverance in this task. We were supposed to visit these grades for observation in our lunch breaks and free periods which was usually a tedious task that one would rather not want to perform for 6 months straight. However, since I did realize that at the very start I had agreed to do this, I made sure to visit the classes as much as possible and sometimes even out of my time schedule to solve bigger issues.

LO6 also played a major role in this cas experience of mine. Here, we sometimes had to witness issues such as bulling and body-shaming among children which are very grave global issues in today’s time. Even though I constantly heard about this in school and saw it on online platforms, noticing such things physically and also trying to solve them made me understand the issue from another point of view.

Lastly, LO7 was very important in this experience. Peace Cadre being a platform that mainly had interactions between students brought the weight of ethics an choices into the picture. Since we were all part of the same school we knew that the children we are dealing with might end up being our friends. However, I made sure that this never affected me or any of the students trying to express their concerns. I also encouraged the students of the class I was asked to supervise to be honest about their issues and not defend people just because they were their friends.

Overall, this was a very good learning experience for me which I believe has prepared me for the more complex situations that may rise in my life where I have to make tough decisions.