Previously this week, I arrived home at about 10 pm and was hoping to see my whole family to have a little chat like I always do when I get home. I actually found myself entering the most quiet house in Lima. No lights, no sound, nobody walking around, not even my dogs. I checked each room but there was no signal of any alive people. I ended waking up my dad and we had a small conversation. He asked me how I did on my math test that day, and I responded with the truth, terrible. He exploted. "How is that possible? Did you study for it? You are starting the IB! What is going on? You better have some good arguments to defend yourself about this." My answer... ICC.
Interclass Competition... the most important, tense, competitive but fun week of the school year. The best opportunity to bond with your prom, explore your passions and especially, to scream your lungs out. But as everything in life, there are pro and cons, and I believe the problem is not the week itself, but the week before. Preparing the cheer, the mural, decorations, sign-ups, jackets, shirts, these are all things you need to work on way before the actual ICC week, most of them start about 4 weeks before, the first week of the school year. But what makes students so engaged with this event? Well, I believe the answer could be competition, teamwork and passions. The word competition is inspirational, challenging and wakes up the adrenaline inside of us. It's a feeling that can't really be described. Everybody has been through a competitive environment, it is all around us. When you are driving next to a car, you accelerate to make you seem faster; when you see that your friend is at the last page of the test, you instanly speed up to finish first; when you want to get a raise in your salary and there is another partner that wants it too, you start working harder to win and get the salary; it's our instict. Well, ICC has a lot of this. The four high school proms compete each other for a whole week, playing sports, presenting a cheer, painting a mural, doing different activities in arts, music, theater and others. Being under this pressure can affect you in a major way, you are constantly incentivated by the adrenaline and suddenly realize that you can push yourself a little bit to get where you want to get. You start to sacrifice some things because the priority is always ICC. And by "things" I mean schoolwork. "Teamwork makes the dream work." The key for success is teamwork, at least in ICC it is. If you have a united prom, a team, the experience is completely different, they become your family and those five days become the best of your life. In my opinion, teamwork is a main factor of why students are so engaged with the event. The idea is basically that everything you do, will affect your team players, before acting you are thinking of the team, everybody counts and each person makes a difference in the experience. If you fail, the team fails. If you win, it's a win for the whole team. You are thinking not only for yourself but for more than one hundred team players. For example, when you get into the cheer, you are getting yourself into probably the most complicated and stressful 40 hours of your life, but there is no way you can quit at any point because you will be affecting not only the cheer team, but the whole prom, the whole team. This is something that keeps you motivated and pushes yourself a little bit more for the team. But let me tell you something, at the end of the day all of these sacrifices are 101% worth it. And last but not least... the third factor that makes ICC the favorite week of the year is that you can explore your passions, you have choice on what you are doing for the team. It's not like when you are choosing your IB courses, where you are a little limited on the options. Here you can choose what your passions are or what you are good at in order to benefit everybody in the team. This is something that I personally like very much because for my IB courses, I had to choose a science course and this is the subject I am less interested in. I think we should all have the right to study and do what we like and what we are good at. This is why ICC is very engaging for students because they are able to explore their passions without anybody telling them what to do or not do. Competition, teamwork and choice are the key elements of the ICC that are missing in school. It doesn't have to be exactly like it is during the week, it can be adapted for school. For example, having small competitions in the classroom or against classrooms or even against proms, that will incentive students to give their best and push themselves a little bit. When doing school projects, adding some groups and incentivicing teamwork would also make students more engaged with the subject and with school in general. Finally, give students choice, let them choose what they want to write their essay about, allowing them to explore their interests and receiving much better work from them. In a nutshell, incorporating ICC values and traditions to our school would bring much interested and engaged students to the community!
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Have you ever been attacked by a rat? A couple weeks ago, my answer would have been no as well. It was a cold night, there were about fifty sleeping bags in a small room, but it was more like fifty cocoons on top of each other. It was late at night, we were supposed to be sleeping, but of course, we weren't. Suddenly, the only thing I saw in front of me was the shadow of something round with a long tail jumping up and down on top of a bag, I thought I was already dreaming of something weird. It started running. It was right behind our sleeping bags. Fifty cocoons trying to escape through the same single door. Shouting. Running. Caos.
The last week of July I went to Huaraz, I was doing a religious mission. It was a lot different than what I expected... no bathroom, no cars, no hot food, no internet, no signal. The conditions we had were a little extreme in my opinion. But this opinion quickly changed throughout the week. The day after the rat attack, I was walking around the house we were staying at, and I saw a little girl, that was probably about eight years old, with a baby on her arms, the baby was probably one or two. I came up to her and asked about her mother, she said that she worked from early in the morning until late at night and during the day she had to take care of her little brother. I supposed someone took care of the baby while she went to school for a few hours in the day but got surprised with her answer: "I can't go to school, I stay with him the entire day." This type of answers you don't forget that easily, especially when they are coming from such a smiley and happy little girl. What was I supposed to answer? I still can't figure it out. One of the other days, we walked to another town, to spend a fun day with the kids and go to church with them and their families. When the communion part came, I was just watching how everybody smiled while standing in the line, but suddenly my sight lowered and saw about forty naked feet, but they were nothing like Katy Perry's feet, they had scars, dried blood, dried mud and a lot of dust. Could you imagine yourself walking all day and night without a pair of shoes? And by the way, Huaraz has very low temperatures, it reaches -3-celsius degrees at night. Then, I started to think... Sometimes I complain because my shoes are not high enough, or warm enough, or fashionable enough when there are people that don't even own a pair. And this is a story that really broke my heart. Every day I saw a little girl, she was two years old, she always walked around the house we were staying at, the smile on her face was inspiring. I loved spending time with her, we shared my food, we laughed, we sang, we danced, we ran, it was priceless. Then on the last day, I was told that she didn't have her parents, she lived with some cousins or friends of the family. A two-year-old living basically on her own? Exactly, I had the same reaction. I ended up realising that sometimes you need to have these "shocks" in your life in order to realise who you are, what you own, who you share it with and how lucky you can be. We need these impacts in our lives to start acting and stop focusing your life in your cell phone, the internet, how hot your food is, what car you have and how many pairs of shoes you own. I was incredibly lucky to live this experience, to meet all these amazing kids and families that inspired me so much. Watching all the kids having fun without the use of an iPad or iPhone, just running around, playing with animals, plants and with their friends. I believe that we are so used to live our lives, that we become extremely self-centered and we forget that there are so many people out there that need us. One of the most important rules of life is to put yourself in other's shoes, and we forget to do this quite frequently. But it is a very effective rule, it allows you to step out of your world and enter a whole different life, where you can learn so much and cause a big impact in the world around you. Even the smallest things can cause a big impact, in the end, the rat was able to cause a huge impact in all of our lives, it is a story that I will never forget. |
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March 2017
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