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A problem about CAS


Ristang

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I'm new here and I'm excited to be a member here.

The purpose of this topic is to look for help.

To introduce first, I'm in a ib school, which is very small with a few students and teachers. Most students are local, and also there are international students from different countries.

However, as an ib school, our CAS system is unsatisfactory. We can do CAS only three hours a week, in regular periods. Everyone is forced to join no more than one in each period. What's worse, available activities are on at the same time, which provides us with few choices.

Then, I was determined to talk about it with school. However, our CAS coordinator kind of disagreed and said that :

students were not that willing to do activities, so we needn't provide that much time for CAS;

teachers didn't have that much time and energy to supervise;

ib only needs 150 hours, so we didn't need to do so much activities;

ib also said that 25% CAS could be done without school teachers as supervisors.

As a matter of fact, I doubt all of those, and I'm sure you do as well.

For the time being, I need more proof and information about the CAS system of other ib schools, and also some suggestions for me about what to do next or opinions on any of points that the CAS coordinator said.

I really wish I can get help here. I will appreciate it! Thank you very much!

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The thing with CAS is that its requirements are very loose and open to interpretation. There isn't really a set way that you HAVE to do them, so long as you complete every learning outcome at least once and you had at least 150 hours (not sure if this still applies, it did in my session and at my school). Also, since CAS isn't "moderated" like an IA it's up to your CAS coordinator to determine if you've completed it. Whatever rules your CAS coordinator came up with is what you have to stick with. You're not going to probably change anything unless your coordinator was very much going against the CAS requirements (not requiring reflections, learning outcomes, etc).

At my school we had to have a minimum of 150 hours with a reasonable balance between service, action, and creativity. We didn't get any time within school to complete it (like a CAS block like you've seem to described, so be lucky!), we had to complete all of it outside of school or after school. Anyone could be a supervisor except a parent or friend for any approved activity, unless you had talked to the supervisor beforehand and had gotten permission.

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In my school, we only have to get 150 hours, with a balance between all three categories. We are required to submit proposals 5 days before the activity, have it approved, and have our CAS log signed. Our supervisors also cannot be friends or family. After writing reflections, we have to turn it in pretty quickly after the activities corresponding to it, since our coordinator states that no activity turned in can be over 30 days old. All of the activities have to be done outside of class (actually anything that happens during school such as Newspaper [creativity] does not count for CAS in my school). It helps to join a lot of clubs and maybe one or two sports, but either way, al of my categories are well covered.

My best suggestion is to either form a club or join one to cover the CAS requirements. For those who are not in a sport, some students formed a "sports club," which they love. It is nice that your school gives you time to get some hours. As far as the hours seeming so few, my school will accept a surplus of service hours (without reflections after 50 hours) so that it can be documented for scholarships and such.

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