CAS is one of the core components of the IB Diploma, which stands for Creativity, Activity, and Service. St Clare’s is very committed to the CAS programme as the experiences offered by the school are meant to promote the development of the IB learner profile. Students are required to choose at least one experience from each of the three categories to complete on a weekly basis throughout a whole term as part of their curriculum. A wide variety of options are provided to satisfy everyone regardless of their interests, abilities, and time availability. Despite all options being ideal opportunities to enhance one’s skills, service experiences in particular, are the ones in charge of stimulating students to contribute not only to the school’s community but also, to Oxford’s one. Let me give you a sneak peek of what St Clare’s offers in their CAS programme.
Calling for Nature Lovers
Oxford is more than just the city known for its prestigious academic offers. Its rich nature is often diminished but St Clare’s is very keen on encouraging students to embrace and preserve their natural surroundings. A range of CAS services are offered by the school in order to look after the local landscape and environment. These experiences indeed foster the caring, reflective, and principled aspects of the IB learner profile. Here is a list of the students’ favourite outdoors experiences.
PETS AND PLANTS: The school has a Biology laboratory which is home to a variety of plants as well as a snake and a tortoise who are carefully looked after by both teachers and students. Students who would like to contribute further to the well-being of these are part of this CAS service. They go on a weekly basis to water the plants, feed the animals, and show them some love.
ECO SCHOOLS: The student council body includes the environmental committee, which is a group of students who were chosen by their peers to be in charge of raising awareness on how students’ daily actions directly impact the environment. Their CAS club seeks to work as a group to come up with solutions to tackle the everyday actions that are contributing to a bigger issue: climate change. By sending out surveys and conducting research, students’ job is to focus on the local community to indirectly enhance living conditions at a wider scale. You can hear more details about it from the Eco Schools’ leaders, Tristan and Saule, in the interview I had the pleasure to record with them.
NATURE CARE: The main goal of this CAS service is to encourage students to reflect on their interaction with the natural world and restore the land which was a rubbish tip for a hundred years. Vicky, one of the English teachers, is the supervisor of this CAS service. I have asked her and one of my fellow students some questions to know more details on this experience which not only improves the environment’s conditions, but also the overall students’ mood.
Vicky gave a brief account on how this service started: “In Feb 2020 one of the first indicators of COVID for St Clare’s was the care homes we used to visit (a CAS I ran called Visiting the Elderly) asked us to stop coming.” The St Clare’s community found themselves at a challenging position when lockdown forced them to do their ongoing CAS experiences online. However, months later, this decree that was firstly seen as misfortune, soon became an opportunity to give the school a fresh start. For instance, monthly Nature and Care outings were organised.
Vicky referred to it as a therapy to escape from anxiety and stress: “Therapy begins with wearing old clothes, putting on boots and work gloves, using tools that make one feel able to tackle the rough edges of life.” Then the students and her walk to the nature reserve and observe any changes from the previous month’s outing. On their way to the Trap Grounds, where they meet two other members of the reserve, they are taught about flora and fauna’s English names to enhance a sense of belonging to Oxford and Britain. The landscape normally includes herons, swans, ducks, robins, and once they start working on the soil frogs are found among other foreign elements such as bottles, tiles and shoes.
After three tiring although rewarding hours of labour, they all find themselves feeling calmer and fulfilled. As one student remarked: “This CAS is a service not only to St Clare’s, but to the wider Oxford community. It always brings me joy to contribute towards a global common goal.”
Students raking grass during a Nature and Care outing
Nurturing One’s Creativity
Working on one’s creative skills while also contributing to the local community can be very appealing for students to stay committed to their CAS experience. That is why St Clare’s offers some services which have a more creative focus. Here is where the balanced and thinker approaches of the IB learner profiles come into play. Below is a list of St Clare’s most authentic CAS options.
SUPERVISED MUSIC: Both music and non-music students are warmly welcome to take part in weekly vocal singing sessions with the school’s music teacher. Although this experience might solely sound as part of the creativity section options, it is not. Not only do students enjoy themselves while sharing music with their colleagues, but also, they work as a group to organise one of the most awaited events of the term: the open-mic night. This is an event which is hosted at the end of each term to celebrate art and to promote a space of enjoyment, entertainment and unity within the St Clare’s community.
June 2024 St Clare’s Magazine cover
ST CLARE’S MAGAZINE: For those seeking to work collaboratively, St Clare’s Magazine is a great CAS Service club to be part of. As the Arts and Culture’s editor, I must say that it feels especially rewarding to work hard throughout a whole term and finally get to put together a project we have all been waiting for: the term’s school magazine issue.
In this experience, students get to choose what team to join according to their interest: news, features, arts and culture, sports, or the design team. Regardless of the section they work in, everyone is required to write at least one article per term and later on help with the design process. As the term is coming to an end, the sessions become more exciting because everyone works hard to collectively develop the final piece.
This CAS experience really develops one’s creativity, writing, reading, critical thinking and collaborative skills, while providing the school with a tool of entertainment that aims to celebrate local talents, events and community.
MARKETING CONTENT CREATION: I am also part of the Marketing Content Creation CAS. Along with the supervisors, Giulia and Louise, we discuss possible projects on how to reach a wider audience in social media by showing the authentic image of St Clare’s through students’ eyes. It is very important to remain loyal to the school’s principles by sharing its dynamics which cannot be appreciated from outside the establishment otherwise. We are required to submit two pieces of work per term which can be in any visual or written format that we enjoy. Our supervisors do a great job in always showing us ways to improve our projects by sharing with us tools and techniques. All together, we work towards sharing with non-St Clare’s students what our community is all about. That is why, keeping up with the school’s socials can be helpful to get a real insight on what to expect when joining our community.
Contributing to the St Clare’s Community
St Clare’s is very keen on raising awareness on the importance of starting small to achieve bigger results. In other words, the importance of making changes by helping within one’s small community to have a larger impact. That is why, in order to raise open-minded individuals, who constantly inquire on how to seek for improvements, students are encouraged to involve themselves in CAS Services that aim to help the school’s community.
ACADEMIC SUPPORT COMMITTEE: The Academic Support Committee is one of the most important bodies of the student council as they directly deal with students’ academic life. Lamprini, a second year of IB student is currently the leader of this CAS experience. She explained that the group is formed by first and second year students that have a remarkable academic performance and who collaboratively work to create resources that their mates can use while revising for exams, as well as research weekly notices in Oxford or school-based events and deadlines. “Lately, we have been working on two major projects. One is the creation of an academic research project by the members of the CAS; and the other one is a website exclusively for the STC community with revision notes for each subject.” Their hard work on every session, on top of the one-to-one tutoring sessions with pre-IB students, makes it possible for students to arrive at exam dates feeling much more confident about their knowledge. As she explained: “We are creating an environment where academic success is encouraged and celebrated.”
Academic Support website
LANGUAGE NETWORK – Teachers & Students: Considering St Clare’s international environment, English is meant to be spoken in students’ conversations to foster inclusivity. However, for the curious ones, the Language Network CAS club is a great choice to pick. This experience consists of two students, who speak different languages, getting together on a weekly basis to teach each other the basics, and eventually the advanced, of their own language. That way, students can understand and experience each other’s culture while celebrating diversity.
PEER SUPPORT: Similar to the Academic Support Committee, Peer Support is a group of students from second year of IB that are available for students whenever they need a colleague to talk to. The main difference with the committee I previously mentioned, is that this group mainly deals with students’ personal lives rather than academics. As Ioana, a second year of IB student pointed out: “We try to maximise students’ productivity and ensure they are well mentally and physically. We are kind of older siblings helping younger siblings by providing them with advice. Our job is to be there for any questions and give help based on our experience throughout the journey of the IB Diploma.” That way, if any member from the St Clare’s community is facing a situation in which they would rather talk with another student one-to-one, then the Peer Support team will be happy to help. Conversations remain confidential but if considered appropriate, the team would involve a responsible adult in the conversation too.
TEACHING ASSISTANTS – Bulgarian Language: At first, this CAS Service experience might be easily discarded as it is exclusive to Bulgarian speakers. However, the reason why it remains solely available to Bulgarian speakers is because sometimes cultural understanding is essential to connect with people who are being helped. Teodora, the school’s Bulgarian teacher, explains that in this case: “It is a unique opportunity for the Bulgarian students at St Clare’s to observe how education works in real life, and to experience themselves as part of the process by helping pupils of various ages, from the Bulgarian school Slovo, to follow the teacher’s instruction (if they have very little Bulgarian at this stage), or write a short sentence in their workbooks, or also by assisting traditional festivals.” This way, St Clare’s students would make a link with other school’s students and connect to each other through their culture and traditions, besides developing knowledgeable, hard-working and kind traits.
Helping the Oxford Community
Contributing to one’s school community is the first step to becoming a caring individual. However, taking the risk to seek for solutions on a wider scale, such as tackling issues in the local community, can often be more challenging although very rewarding. St Clare’s tries to make students reflect on their roles as members of the Oxford community to identify the conflicts that need to be solved, communicate them, and subsequently address principled responses. The school’s community works hard to help our Oxford neighbours through some CAS Services experiences such as:
SHARE AND CARE: In Share and Care, students contribute to the Oxford community by supporting homeless neighbours. Sara, an IB2 student, commented that they came up with various creative initiatives to raise awareness on this issue as well as encouraging other students to help: “We organise outings every term. These consist of going in small groups to the city’s centre and approach the homeless we encounter to ask whether we can provide them with some food, which brightens up their day and brings them hope into their lives. We also hold fundraising events at school, such as the Secret Santa sale for Christmas, in which we sell chocolate Santas which students can buy to send to a friend together with a message to show appreciation. All the money collected is used to help the homeless in Oxford by buying them food and basic needs. Lastly, we do several donations, like the recent Crisis one.” As you can tell, this group of students works hard enough to make important changes in the Oxford community because they believe that their small actions can have a huge impact in our world.
Students gathering the Christmas crisis donations
POST PALS: It was not until I talked to members of the Post Pals CAS club that I understood the act of kindness that the students involved in this service are doing.
“Post Pals is a small charity run solely by volunteers who are dedicated to making seriously ill children and their siblings aged 3-17 smile.” Students meet on a weekly basis to collaboratively write letters, cards and make gifts to send to the young whose health is affected. Previously, they received details about the child to make sure that appropriate items, which they may like, are delivered. In addition, students develop their collaborative skills by teaching each other their creative skills: “If someone has a skill such as origami or making friendship bracelets then we help share these skills with others in the group.”
Although they do not often see the direct impact of their gesture, sometimes they get to see the children smiling while holding their letters on the Post Pals Instagram account.
As you may see with the examples mentioned above, St Clare’s is very keen on offering a wide range of service options in its CAS programme to incentivise students to get involved in the school’s and local community while also maximising their potential. Encouraging students to develop skills that will indeed help them throughout life is the number one step to fostering global citizens that will make the world a better place to live in.
Written by Tina – IB25 student