Peace Cadre is a student club where Grade 11 volunteers look over their juniors and ensure that there isn’t any bullying or misbehaving happening. I volunteered in this club because I’m very much against bullying and want to make sure that I do everything on my end to stop people from getting bullied or misbehaving. I, along with another volunteer had to pair up and monitor three sections of Grade 8. This experience helped me develop LO1, LO2, LO4 and LO5.

LO1, LO2 and LO4:

One of my biggest strengths, that I realized through this CAS experience was communication and my persuasion skills. I was easily able to tackle all sorts of misbehavior and bullying complaints by simply having a detailed conversation with them and listening to them. In the beginning, when there were more cases of misbehavior taking place, I was still able to keep my calm and ensure things were handled fairly. However, one of the biggest challenges I faced was time management. As this activity went longer, I started to get more and more other IB assignments. Normally, I would go to observe these sections in my free slots. However, after a certain point, most of my free slots were booked for meeting with teachers to clearing my doubts for the countless assignments and tests lined up for me. This really challenged me and got in the way of my trying to monitor the classes and at a certain point, I considered quitting the Peace Cadre to focus more on my academics. Nevertheless, I was able to come up with a flexible system where my partner and I agreed to spend more frequent visits for fewer durations. This way, we were able to observe the classes for the same amount of time, however at different time intervals.

LO5:

I got to work with a classmate of mine that I had never been friends with. For a socially awkward person like me, it was difficult at first to bond with my partner well. However, as the activity went on, I realized we had similar thoughts and would get along well. We even came up with solutions to problems together. There were times when we disagreed on things (especially when it came to the approach to be taken to tackle certain cases) but, that only helped me to gain a newer perspective and I’m grateful for that.

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