<p>I don't know if this would belong in the IB forum... but I'm just a bit confused. The staff at my school hasn't really explained the concept of CAS yet and I hear that students are picking advisors now, which is really early... Can somebody explain what CAS is? I know it has something to do with community service hours but that's all I know.</p>
<p>CAS stands for creativity, action, service. Creativity means anything you put creative efforts into, so it can range from writing short stories to dancing to building architecture to designing a car. Action means anything that you break a sweat doing, but this is relative thing. If you are a 3 sport varsity athlete, my coordinator said that stuff like yoga would not be acceptable as a CAS activity. However, if you don’t do any sports, yoga is fine because it’s on par with your athletic standards. Yoga is actually really intense so it doesn’t apply here, but what he’s trying to say is that if you’re really athletic, your standards need to be higher. Service is anything done for the community, which can range from tutoring, service projects, shoveling people’s backyards when it snows. You need to do 50 hours in each section. It doesn’t have to be one activity for all 50 hours (in fact, that’s not even allowed at some schools) but rather a range for each section.</p>
<p>Before you do your CAS hours, you write down your goals for each activity. During your CAS hours, you talk about what’s actually going on and if it meets what you expected. After, you reflect whether you feel like you reached your goals and you’ll talk about what you learned. You do these reflections for every activity on a system that your IB coordinator will show you. You also have “IB outcomes,” which are things like “global awareness” and “teamwork,” so these are things you also have to reflect on in your reflections. </p>
<p>You also have to do a CAS project, which is basically a project that combines 2 disciplines. An example of a CAS project could be doing a dance recital in which all the money goes to charity. Of the 40 hours you spent on it, 30 could be athletic and 10 could be service. </p>
<p>Lastly, the CAS advisers don’t do much, at least at my school. They basically make sure you’re on the right track, and you’re not, they scold you. They have to approve all of your activities and then read over the reflection and make sure it’s appropriate in terms of did you actually write about everything you were supposed to. </p>
<p>This is a broad overview of CAS because I don’t want to give too many details since most of it varies per school. Some schools have timelines but my school is “just get it done before the deadline your senior year and you’re good.” It’s not graded, but the completion of it is mandatory for the diploma. Honestly it may seem like a waste of time at first, but if you really think about what you’re supposed to think about, like reflecting and considering the outcomes of the activity, then you’ll find yourself learning a lot about yourself. Feel free to ask my anything else! I kind of rushed this post because there’s a lot to CAS and I didn’t know what to include and what not to include. </p>
<p>Oh thank you so much @sumobats! It was very informational. Are you required to do something of each letter? Like do we have to do something creative, something athletic, and community service?</p>
<p>Yes, 50 hours for each is mandatory. You can’t do like 100 hours of service and 50 hours of creative and then be done with it. </p>