Hindi Immersion was an initiative by our DP Hindi teachers which was to promote Hindi on Hindi Language Day. I volunteered for this event when I was in Grade 11 (year 2020-21). We had 4 groups (4-5 members per group) made within ourselves and conducted regular meetings and discussions with all the groups to come up with interesting and engaging activities which would serve our purpose. All the groups had to prepare different activities and games for Grade 11 and 12 students on two different days. 12th October 2020 was the first day of this event and we had it with our fellow batchmates of grade 11 hindi students, the next day (13th October 2020) was with grade 12 hindi students. We creatively brainstormed and planned many activities including: Dumb Charades, Kahoot, Pictionary, Hindi related riddles and idioms, etc. Our hindi teachers helped and supported us a lot in the planning and execution of the whole event. On the days of the event we had several DP teachers who joined us to share a fun time.

LO 1 – I had lots of fun being a part of this event, I love to interact with people and share my ideas, receive theirs so it was a great opportunity for me. I am good at collaborating with my team members and others for any sort of tasks or projects, etc. This understanding I have of me enhanced and improved over the course of this event. I struggle with time management a lot of the time, and that was challenged the most while I did this event. Also, since this event was online over a google meet, it was very difficult to know whether the activities we were making our participants play were enjoyable for them or not. The game my group played was dumb charades, which requires a person to turn on their camera so others could see what actions they are doing in order to guess the movie name, due to this people who had a bad Wi-Fi connection couldn’t turn on their camera and some people’s videos either froze or lagged. To handle such a situation, sometimes me and my teammates had to pitch in and act out the movies ourselves.

LO 2 – We had started with planning the event roughly around 28th September 2020. One thing I struggled with was managing my many projects and tasks on-going along with academics. At the time of planning Hindi Immersion, I also had to collaboratively plan an event for Psychology Club for the upcoming Mental Health Awareness Day (MHAD) on 7th October; because of these two events being so close by, my meetings for discussions over the events used to clash a lot making it very difficult for me to juggle between them and manage my time. I also had one of my projects on-going at the same time, MATP. All this chaos and hassle challenged my ability to manage time, which I have known myself to struggle with for the longest of time, but surprisingly I didn’t feel exhausted or burdened in any way, instead I felt energetic and motivated to do a lot of work at the same time to fulfill my responsibilities. I realised that although having lots of work piled up and clashing with each other could stress one out, it could also help one achieve newer milestones of their capabilities and skills, and I am glad I had to face such a challenge which helped me improve immensely in several areas. I discovered that I can multitask really well even when all of the tasks at hand are collaborative, which actually requires a lot more than individual tasks would in certain situations.

LO 3 – As written above, I had to manage my time and several other colliding tasks. Planning and initiating projects/tasks isn’t usually difficult for me since I have had a lot of experience in this due to CAS, I had many collaborative and planning/initiating projects/experiences that I had done before Hindi Immersion. Although, choosing an activity for our group was difficult because of the time constraints on the day of the event and because we couldn’t take the same activity as any other group. The activity had to be engaging too for a huge number of students and teachers. The more I experience planning these types of events the more I gain an understanding of myself as a group member, types of people we can find in a group and how to work synergistically with them.

LO 4 – As already explained, I had many tasks colliding with this event, and I had to be sure to complete each and every task. But I was committed and determined to complete this task that I had volunteered for, it was my responsibility and I participated well in all discussions/tasks. We were required to regularly attend meetings and participate in the discussions, we also had to keep on giving updates to the leaders and hindi teachers about our progress and difficulties we were facing. We also had individual meetings with only our team members to finalize our roles and responsibilities on the day of the event. Although, 2-3 times I had Psychology Club’s MHAD meetings clash at the same time with Hindi Immersion’s, there was no rescheduling possible for the both of them, thus I had to leave early from one of them to join the other meeting almost all the time. I am usually very committed and determined to complete tasks with the best of my efforts, especially when I myself volunteer for or initiate them; I believe this innate trait of mine helped me complete and be consistent with all of my CAS experiences/projects.

LO 5 – Working in a team is generally easy for me, that is if my teammates are putting in the same amount of effort and have determination as me, or else it irritates me when people become a part of a group but are not committed and responsible enough to work their part. I don’t like it when I have to give constant reminders to my teammates to complete their part of the work. But luckily, for Hindi Immersion, my group members were equally determined and committed to make this a fun event for all, everybody was on time in completing their tasks and collaborated effectively which resulted in an enjoyable event on both the days. Particularly for this, collaboration and teamwork was important since we had to come up with many different ideas which could only be possible through effective communication with other groups’ members and hindi teachers. And the help we received as a group was amazing, since at first whatever games we were thinking of were either already taken up by others or were not possible online. There were 2 leaders for the whole event who managed everything really well and guided us throughout the duration of Hindi Immersion.

To conclude, throughout the whole process I developed and enhanced many Learner Profile attributes such as: Communicators, Principled, Thinkers, Balanced, Inquirers. All in all, we were able to hold a successful fun event and got positive feedback from all the DP teachers that attended and participated. The students who joined had lots of fun as well as the event planners, meaning us and the hindi teachers. The highlight, for me, was the impeccable participation DP teachers had on both the days, it seemed as if they enjoyed their free time with us, which made me very happy. After we were done completely with Hindi Immersion, all of the event planners got a green flag to celebrate our hard work, dedication, and successful executions on event days.

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