Cas Night

Welcome back! It’s a beautiful Sunday night in Guanacaste, and I am sitting here reflecting on CAS night in all its awe and glory. CAS night was undoubtedly a success, and I plan on telling you all about it in today’s entry, along with a general reflection on the progress I’ve made in these past few weeks (and of course the beloved 7 learning outcomes.
Alright, so let’s talk CAS night: What was it in general? What were some Challenges? What were some benefits? Why did we even do it? Put simply, CAS night is an opportunity for the most advanced/farthest along projects in both the 11th and 12th grade classes to present about their projects and in many cases secure funding/donations. CAS night is about the community coming together to celebrate the work of a group of dedicated students who really want to see something done within their community. Hosted by the Seasons hotel, CAS night usual sees an attendance of around a hundred or so parents, students, and faculty members from La Paz and is an excellent opportunity for the community to come together and celebrate! This is a tradition that has been upheld for years, and thanks to the hard work of Mayan Saturday night was quite possibly the best CAS night yet. Of course, there is no school event without its challenges, and we certainly had a few. The main issue was technical difficulties, from static mics to a finicky projection sheet, however these were easily (or maybe not so easily) overcome and didn’t seriously affect any of the presentations. The other main challenge was much more simple; The speakers were very nervous! I personally was calm for most of the night, but I no doubt had the butterflies a couple of times before my presentation. With a much larger audience than usual there was no shortage of pressure, but everyone handled it extremely well. I actually prefer a larger audience, so that factor didn’t really affect me. MUN has taught me a lot about speaking in crowd, and I was able to appear relaxed and confident while clearly explaining my project, its purpose, and what it meant to me. CAS night is meant to help students raise awareness for their projects, and I am confident that the parents are excited for their kids to be participating in my MUN conference (or the conferences to come!). Overall I am very pleased with my first CAS night, and I have MUN to thank for a big portion of that!
Now, in terms of my project itself, how has it been progressing? These past few weeks have been busy, with a large amount of time being taken for CAS night preparation and the tweaking of my presentation. This connects directly to the IB learning outcome of planning a CAS experience, as I had to ensure that the presentation was finalized wll before CAS night and that it catered to the audience. I have also spent these past few weeks presenting to the 9th and 10th graders with my seminar 1, which is obviously connected to the learning outcome of identifying areas of personal growth as I am always trying to improve my public speaking ability. I am very happy with my progress so far and look forward to more!