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!
1 Comment
Emilio
8/31/2015 03:23:22 am
My favorite part of your blog is when you start talking about how we could apply ICC into school.Not only that but also I really liked when yu gave examples of "yourfriend on the last page of the test" because its something I was able to realet with.
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