Creativity, Activity, and Service (CAS)

 Izabella Curtis  IB student 2021 Gardening     This week I have been trying to find therapeutic ways to relieve my stress. So I have gotten into gardening. I have mostly been focused on my succulents and desert plants due to the extremely hot weather we have been having in Houston TX. Basically, everything else I have planted has dried up and died pretty quickly. Since I am learning many new skills I am putting this under Learning Outcome 2, I have overcome many challenges with weather, and other variables when it comes to my plants. Bringing this new skill to my community I have become well known around my neighborhood and have created a sort of community of gradeners! 

 Izabella Curtis IB Student  Animeal Animeals is an important organization that provides services for animals and housebound senior citizens who are unable to properly care for their pets. In this work, we created care packages that went out to these people that had pet food, water, and toys for the pets inquired. As well as food for homeless people and creating new packages for a large number of people within our community. I identified this with Learning Outcome 7,  I chose this outcome because I noticed that most of these meals were going to people who are considered lower class and have been almost shunned from our society. 

Izabella Curtis Ib Student 2021 The Museum of Fine Arts Houston  Beatrice Gonzales Exhibit I walked to the Museum of Fine Arts to go see this really cool exhibition. Beatrice Gonzales is an activist in Spain and she has a very interesting color pallet with strong use of orange and a blue/green color. She drew and painted a lot of different things and unique things. She would have these clippings of murder and rape cases have a drawing of the picture and then she would have a silkscreen and maybe even a painting of it. You can really tell that she had a large thought process and really thought about what she was doing. Her whole style switched near the end of her life. She even had a different color pallet. She had a lot of emotions and an interesting eye to each price. It was really cool! Learning Outcome 1, Identify your own strengths and develop areas of growth. I got to walk through this exhibit and analyze a few of her pieces.

Izabella Curtis Ib Student Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry Documentary I watched the “Not Sorry” documentary located on Netflix. It was about the famous political Chinese artist Ai Weiwei and it was about his story and his art process, one of my favorite pieces he has made is called “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn” (1995), it is a series of 3 pictures of Ai Weiwei dropping a Han Dynasty urn. Anyway this is learning outcome 1, Identify own strengths and develop areas of growth. This is learning outcome 1 because art history is one of my strengths and watching this documentary taught me about this really cool new artist I never knew about. Super cool documentary 10/10 would recommend you to watch it.  Never Sorry Documentary  “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn” 1995

Izabella Curtis Ib Student 2021 Chore Corps Service Event I went to an event at my school where we worked with Chore Crops. Chore Corps is when volunteers help senior citizens with in-home services. This could be mowing the lawn, cleaning their kitchen, and even just talking to the senior citizens. The first lady my group worked with asked us to have her lawn cleaned up. We raked her leaves and put them in bags for her and she was a really cool person. She let her dogs out and we got a lot of love from them. The second lady asked use to clean her house. She had a very small house and I was assigned to clean her fregue... She had not cleaned that fridge in 2 years! It was very nasty. This is learning outcome 6 which is demonstrating engagement with issues of global significance. This is outcome 6 because I learned about the housing systems in houston and recognizing the impact that has on people lives. 

Izabella Curtis IB student 2021 Sunshine Kids Volunteer I got the opportunity to work with the Sunshine Kids. The Sunshine Kids is an organization where their only goal is to improve the quality of life to the kids with cancer and have a ton of exciting activities and stuff to do for the whole day. I worked at the art booth and got to talk to children with cancer and their parents. This is learning outcome 7 which is recognizing the ethics of choice and action. This is learning outcome 7 because doing this service event made me think about how lucky me and my family is to not have had any major health issues.

Izabella Curtis  IB Student 2021 Mahjong Club I created the Mahjong Club at my school. This past January (2019), I learned how to play the strategic game MAHJONG with the help of my Chinese teacher Mr. Zhou. I have been hooked ever since! So in this school year (2019-2020), I decided to make Mahjong club with a schoolmate. This is Learning Outcome 3 : Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a fieldwork experience, creating this club has included lots of planning and organizing events. Teaching other schoolmates how to play a foreign game is NOT a simple task. I am very good at mahjong and I am slowly learning how to teach others how to play! I am having a lot of fun with this club and it has been very successful. Our current member count is 13 students and we are having a blast! We have Mahjong Movie Nights and we are soon going to have competitions in our club.