The last and final week without walls for all the years in OSC takes place today the 24th January 2011. A six hour drive down to Hambantota from school starting at around 7:50 to arrive at the hotel at 3ish. The remainder of the afternoon was spent on recreational activities. 6:00 was rendezvous at the lobby to discuss the coming day where we set off officially for service on the two preschools. At this point we were to come up with personal goals in which we are supposed to constantly keep referring to and acting upon. Working collaboratively with all my peers at the schools and in the whole trip was one of my majors. It may seem simple and easy to judge, but however it is rather challenging goal one can set them self with. You always tend to lean to your friends which you regularly communicate and interact with. But once you do actually set foot on the tasks that are assigned to you, the idea of not working with a friend seems to disappear and the mind set of getting the task completed shifts into the primary. This is one of the reasons why our grade as a whole was able to accomplish more than what we expected to and more.
As a whole this week without walls program was not the worst, nor the best “perfect”. It had its ups and downs, good times and not so good times. In terms of personal goals, they were met to a certain extent and in some cases fully. Although we did the best possible for the schools in the time which was provided to us, I still think that there is room for improvement. Improvement in the sense not from what we do at the schools, but what we take with us. The purpose of the pilot trip was to estimate the requirements and needs for the schools and at the same time, give us an idea of what we are going to be faced with. All the necessary information was noted down and addressed upon at the time, but however none of the materials which the schools requested was provided to them. For example one of the requests was a new whiteboard for the classroom because the prevailing one was in bad condition. It was agreed upon that it is possible to provide a new one but however a whiteboard wasn’t amongst the list of material we took along. I think that it was a waste of time of the pilot trip if these materials were not addressed or given to the schools as the main purpose was to organize such order. It would be best if all that is done on the pilot trip is taken into account and used wisely to plan ahead rather than showing up to the schools with nothing that they requested for.
