Escape One’s Own Shadow; Be the Best Whatever You Are: 9-10 Club Showcase

Students begin to think seriously about their future plans once they enter high school. Not only their GPA or academic achievements, but the extracurricular activities are also an integral part of everyone’s high school life. As a routine event held every semester, the club showcase was organized for the second time by Grade 9-10 of SHSID. The purpose of this event is to stimulate effort and reward achievement. Each club must send 2 to 3 representatives wearing formal dress or clothes with the club logo to participate in an English debriefing consisting of two segments: the presentation and reply session. Eight distinctive clubs selected from more than 40 clubs from grades 9 and 10 participated in this showcase, presenting their work over this semester to a jury formed by Ms. Min Liu, Director of grade 9-10, Ms. Yueyue Zhang and Zhen Yu, head teachers of grade 9 and 10, Mr. Joshua Pickart and Mr. Aaron Ingham, foreign teachers of grade 9-10, and Lingzhi Li, student delegate from Cambridge. The evaluation points were given by judges based on club activities and specialties, impacts inside and outside the school, communication/interaction between the club and its members, the club’s internal management, the club’s development and potential, the quality of the club’s PowerPoint and presentation, and so on. They juror’s were very focused on each presentation, and they and gave a proper evaluation to each club. Along with this, the jury also gave suggestions about the alternative path to further develop each club.

IT Community Club

Purpose: To teach the student body intermediate/advanced computer skills, and to serve both the school and the world’s community

Activities: Make animation, write articles about IT community, and make a promo video.

Design Thinking Guild

Purpose: The purpose of this guild is to learn and apply the process of design thinking to solve problems and develop new ideas, to share how design thinking is being taught in leading universities and used in companies around the world to innovate, and to ensure prospective universities our students have the ability to apply this knowledge, given the growing interest in this topic.

Activities:

Project 1: What are some school problems that we can fix as students?

Project 2: Projects for CTB

Project 3: The library project was our largest success this year, in which we got the Director’s approval for our ideas. We used design thinking to come up with sustainable reasons to keep the library open for longer hours.

Human Orchestra

Purpose: To Spread A Cappella music, to provide more opportunity for A Cappella lovers, to perform around Shanghai Flash mob, and to give members a deeper understanding of A Cappella Music and arranging.

Activities:

9/28 Sirens concert

12/18 Hear your heart concert performing

12/21 Art festival

Interact Club

Purpose: To pursue joy from doing good, to work with other Interact Clubs of Shanghai and the ASB members, to have regular and diverse social activities, and to have different roles in the club every year.

Activities: Regular meetings, including review of the past projects, discussion about the future plans, and making posters about projects like “Will house visit”, “Library project”, “Renaissance fair”, “Nursing house visit”, and “food fair”.

Mock Trial Club

Purpose: To provide a platform for students interested in law to debate on either real-life or high school mock trial cases. To provide an opportunity for students to work on improving public speech and debate skills.

Activities: Regular activities include preparation for mock trial cases, and execution of the mock trial based on given evidence.

Special activities including public speech and debate training sessions, along with occasional public speaking competitions (BP Debate).

Chinese Culture Club

Purpose: The purpose of this club is to popularize the Chinese culture to the both Chinese and international students in our school, to allow students to familiarize themselves with the traditional Chinese culture, to provide a platform for students who are interested in Chinese culture to communicate, and to give some sessions for students who want to learn more about Chinese culture.

Activities:

Activities for this club include introduction to Chinese poem, traditional Chinese costumes, photo shooting with traditional Chinese costumes, presenting Chinese costumes, and introduction to the Chinese literature courses for the 9th graders. There was also an Art Festival performance of a traditional Chinese dance performance.

WE Club SHSID

Purpose: The purpose of WE Club is to create a sustainable change to the world we live in by impacting the people around, and to help students develop a sense of global citizenship as they start to care about the world and not just themselves.

Activities: Weekly charity sales.

PARTLY SWEET

Purpose: The purpose of Partly Sweet is to provide a home for all “pastry chefs” and “dessert gourmets” in our school, and to provide an opportunity for students to enjoy/learn baking while benefiting others.

Activities:

In this we club we learned to make different kinds of pastries with increasing difficulty, along with various other sweets like cupcakes, tiramisu, brownies, renaissance pastries (apple tarts and pound cakes), match a puddings and Christmas gingerbread.

“Try your best!” On the stage of Club Showcase, SHSID high school students showed the place where they escape their own shadow and can be the best whoever they are. They explore and develop their genuine interest towards different things by achieving goals step by step. During the procedure of recruiting people, building a club, and organizing all the activities, students prepare themselves as whole people outside the classroom and for their college and future.

(Written by Sophia Yang Picture by Sophia Yang)