CAS: Is It Worth It?

CAS is one of the mandatory requirements to achieving the IB diploma. IB students most complete a range of activities along with staying on top of their academic studies. As well as doing these activities, students must reflect on them and provide essential evidence proving they completed these activities. There are three strands of CAS: creativity, activity and service. All tasks must fall under these categories. These activities, chosen by the students, are aimed to show initiative and demonstrate independence. However, sometimes students choose activities that require minimal effort or have no significant value to themselves and their interests.

“Community, activity, and service are the components that you have to fill in order to get an IB diploma.  Our school has a pretty big range of things you can do to fill those requirements; my group deals with making and designing objects using technology”, said Ms. Kresak. “Even though we come to school to learn things, it’s important to have a balanced life where you aren’t just focused on academics, but you can focus on social things that include your interests or passions.”

“CAS shows that you are a balanced person outside of school and not just contained to looking at education through the lenses of a classroom and content-based explorations but looking outside of that”, said Mr. McGartlin. “Based on my experience in high school, CAS is made up of the things you are really going to remember. Students are going to have a hard time remembering crusty old me babbling in class, but are more likely to remember the impact and the activities you engaged with outside of school and took ownership of, improved on, and reflected on.”

Students are required to record their hours of CAS in an online website called ManageBac. This website is introduced to students early on in high school and is reintroduced often. Reflections and hours are recorded as well as checked and edited by CAS coordinators. However, students find the process of recording hours exhausting and hard to stay on top of.

“Going into ManageBac to log in hours is kind of annoying and if there was a way to make this process easier, than maybe students would be more inclined to record their hours, like on a personal device”, said Ms. Kresak.

“ManageBac has its good things and bad things. I don’t think that it’s necessary but that’s a different argument; we could do CAS without ManageBac and I would not have a problem with that,” said Mr. McGartlin. “There is some good that it does in simplifying certain aspects, but there are so many hoops to jump through and boxes to tick, and I do think it constricts some of the creativity that a portfolio could create. If I just let students present to me the three components of CAS in check points throughout the year in different ways, there is an element of creativity in that which is unique.”

Some students feel like CAS is time consuming, especially the reflection aspect of it. Eleventh and twelfth grade students not only have to balance their current work load, but have to deal with the pressure of community service hours and recording every detail as well.

“It’s a lot of work and time consuming even though I do believe its beneficial”, said Sophia Lopukhin. “I think that some CAS groups have problems with organization, which makes me less motivated to participate and the reflections are the most difficult aspect because they take the most time and are very challenging to stay up to date with.”

“Students are so busy, especially in junior and senior year, they may feel forced to participate, which is why doing a project they have interest and actually enjoy is important”, said Mrs. Kresak. ‘If a student is not actually interested or passionate about a group or a project, then they shouldn’t be doing it. It becomes obvious that they have little interested, usually in the project quality itself and the lack of interest is clear especially when they are asked about their project.”

“The thing I hate most about being a CAS coordinator is I go through two years with students and build good relationships with them, and then at the end I have to be the mean guy and they leave the school thinking negatively about me. I hate that part”, said Mr. McGartlin.

Although CAS may seem like an unnecessary time-consuming task imposed by the IB to torture us, CAS has many long-term benefits that will not only help us expand our learning opportunities outside the school, but will also help us learn more about who we are and what we are passionate enough about to pursue.