[IB9] Basketball tournament in Siauliai Didzdvaris Gymnasium

Kristijonas Lotiukas -

            Knowing that basketball is considered Lithuania‘s second religion and mostly all students play it, me and my classmate Haroldas wanted to organise Didždvaris basketball tournament a.k.a. VB CUP. Initially, the tournament was set up as a director of Vaidas Bacys Cup, but he left the post and honorable Vitalis Balsevičius took his place. For identical Vaidas Bacys and Vitalis Balsevičiaus initials tournament name did not changed. The tournament is being organised for many years, so we wanted to extend its existence and also to raise it into a higher level.

           Did we make any adjustment? This year every team had to pay 20 Lt if they wanted to compete in the tournament. The amount of money collected was – 160 Lt. For the money that was collected we will buy 3 sets of medals, 3 trophies and 1 trophy for the most valuable player. Also, every team that plays needs to have a referee, that way students are not only competing with each other, but they also are learning how to  how to referee in a game. The biggest innovation this year was that, we are filming every game that is played and we make highlights of them. Every highlight and match recap you can see on “Youtube” in “DG VB CUP” account. So, these were the major adjustment that we did this year.

          I myself am playing in the tournament for class IB1. My goal this year was to get teachers involved in the tournament. Luckily, I have two amazing history teachers Paulius and Žydrūnas, who were happy to be a part of our team. They both played in one or two games and they both average about 16 points per game. It is really fun to see, when teachers and students are in the same team and competing together towards one goal. The goal is to win the cup. I myself am looking forward to see more teachers playing basketball with students. This kind of after school activities strengthens the bond between the teacher and the student.

I suggest that all students should do more and more activities with their teachers. It does not matter if it is VB CUP it can be any other activity. Operating with your instructor can strengthen the bond between you and him/her. Teachers are not only people who are correcting your work and educating you. No, they are also people who want to have fun just like us. Remember, that the person who is teaching you can also be your friend. 
YouTube channel where all videos related with VB CUP is located

"The table comitee" which writes the protocol and records the game

 A group photo of our IB1 VB CUP team called "Šerminatoriai" together with people who wrote the protocol for the game while the organizers were playing with the team.

A 2013/2014 season trailer of the DG VB CUP

A highlight reel of one of our team's games(our team is called "Šerminatoriai")

[IB9] Radio Club activities in Siauliai Didzdvaris Gymnasium

Martynas Jaugelavičius -

There are a lot of things happening in the school that are usually left unseen. Take the internet site www.dg.su.lt, the two TVs that show the latest information at the entrance, also the electronic bells. Ever wondered where all of this information comes from? If you go up the stairs to the top floor you will soon enter the Radio Club.

Radio Club 89.7FM is an official radio station that can be tuned on to in the Šiauliai region. It is one of the first radio stations in Lithuania that is developed by students. The radio station can be reached via internet or a radio receiver 24 hours a day. Radio Club 89,7FM first aired back in 2003 and is running successfully for more than 10 years now.

I am a part of this team since the first days I am a student of Didzdvaris gymnasium. Throughout the years, I have photographed most of the school’s events, edited and published the photos onto the school’s Facebook pages or the main internet site. I and my colleagues have anchored many radio shows. After being taught the basic audio-editing skills, I was able to edit the audio tracks and even put the result on air. As the Radio Club is the headquarters of the volunteers from the European Voluntary Service (EVS), I had many opportunities of communicating with people from other countries, different religions and social and academic backgrounds.

This year the Radio Club is organising the most popular weekly event among students – DG Brain Games. It requires team work and great responsibility. Also, this year’s Halloween movie was developed in the Radio Club. There was a period of time of a few weeks when the head of the Radio Club, Rasa Zvilnaitė, was away and I was in charge of administrating the school’s internet site. It was a challenging task both technically and emotionally, having in mind that all of the information from teachers and administration flowed into my e-mail box. I believe that the most ambitious plan for this academic year is to create a new representative video abut Didzdvaris gymnasium, which would be shown to guests or would have the role of “visit card”.

The Radio Club is not only a great place for IB’ers to fulfil CAS requirement, but also for self-development or developing skills in team work, audio/visual work, public relations and other domains. It is a place that I would say is unique in the school because of its warm environment and smiling people that have a good subtle sense of humour. I strongly recommend not only IB’ers but all of you to visit the Radio Club on the 3^rd floor and experience the opportunities!

A photo taken from one of the radio club activities - ''DG News''

See you soon!

[IB9] Voluntary work for the "Food Bank" action ||| Part 2

 Vaiva Zokaitė - 

Even though it is not possible to get the IB diploma without completing Creativity, Action and Service hours, it’s not something students of Didždvaris feel like is mandatory or tiring to do – helping others is incredibly rewarding and volunteering becomes a good sort of addiction. Therefore, we’re always seeking for new opportunities to help and in the mood to do well.

“Food Bank” (lith. “Maisto Bankas”) is an organization we’ve started collaborating with not so long ago. Their mission is very simple – help those who need help the most and fill their fridges with food. The project we volunteered to take a part in that my classmate has already written about turned out to be a great success, so it was exciting to find out about a new one. It is called “Kviečiu į svečius“ and it involves two types of people – hosts and guests. The hosts, who are usually people fond of cooking, prepare and serve meals to the guests, who (after they’ve enjoyed the food) express their gratitude by giving some money that goes straight to the “Food Bank”. This way the organization can carry on distributing food products to those in need and stop worrying about the expenses of doing charitable work.

We brainstormed ideas on how we could do this project so it involves as many people as possible and everybody in our group gets to cook. There was one thing we knew for sure – we were going to bake cookies. It was an interesting and rather educational experience as some of us had never done it before. The work was distributed among 3 groups in our class, who came to bake the cookies after classes were over. It was way more fun then we’d expected and I can affirm that cooking with someone does help to create stronger bonds between people and it was some true teamwork.

The cookies were done and we were ready to share them. There were some last minute change of plans, but that didn’t throw us off at all – one of the 3 groups took initiative and used their creativity skills to come up with a new plan. It turned out to be simple, but genius and some of us spent the entire day at school selling cookies to the students and teachers of Didždvaris. The idea went hand in hand with International Day for Tolerance and positive vibes were floating around the hallways of our school.

What did we achieve? 136Lt in cash only for selling mouthwatering cookies. In fact, the money we raised will be multiplied by 16, thanks to the organization, and used to provide food for those in need. What did we learn? We learned, once again, that giving is a zillion times better than receiving. Oh, and we all know how to bake cookies now.

Thank-you notes from the organization.

Photos of us preparing the cookies for baking in the oven.

[IB9] Voluntary work for the “Food Bank” action ||| Part 1

Eglė Radžiūtė -

Didždvaris gymnasium – a school in Lithuania, which is unique not only by the architecture and history, but also by offering students two programs: the national program and the international baccalaureate diploma program (IBDP or IB). I and my classmates make up the smaller part of the students by choosing to study in the IB. We do not feel superior because of it, but we do have some goals that we must reach; for if we do not, we will not get a diploma. One of them is CAS (Creativity, Action, Service). We create some goals every time we are doing CAS, and most of them do not change: we want to help people, learn new information, develop new skills, increase the level of quality for the skills we already have and remember that we can learn something valuable from any person or activity.   

Food bank – the non-profitable organization, which helps those who do not have enough money to protect themselves from hunger. It provides great help to people all over the world. Not only by getting the needed food supplies to poor families, elderly and children’s homes, but also by teaching people how to be selfless, helping, tolerant citizens.

This year, me and my classmates from Didždvaris gymnasium volunteered to help this organization fulfill its mission – help as many people as possible by inspiring people to donate as much as possible. This year donations would be given to a Charity and Support Fund “Vilties Kalnas” (Eng. “Hope Hill”). It provides help to twenty-five families, which were created by people who lived in children’s homes.

We were separated in groups of five or six and each of us had our own job. I and my partner were supposed to greet people, which came to shop, and give advertisements, information about the “Food Bank” action to them. The others had to put the donated food into boxes, fill in papers about what was donated and how many people have made the donations. The time passed very quickly; perhaps because we only had to work for one hour, or maybe because we had a great time completing the goals we set up for ourselves. For example, I wanted to hand out as many advertisements as possible, inform people about this action and lift up people’s spirits by greeting them with a smile.

Many people were generous, kind, friendly and interested by this action. They asked what organization or fund will be getting the donations, what kinds of food they could donate. Of course, there were those who made fun of this action, by offering to buy alcohol, so “they could have more fun”. Some walked right past us, not even looking at us or claiming that they have already donated. Luckily, there were only a few of these kinds of people, so we were not discouraged and we did not lose our enthusiasm.

It was the first time for me and some of my classmates to be part of this action. Because of this reason, I felt anxious, uncomfortable standing in front of the shop’s entrance waiting for people. It was a completely new role for me, and since I am shy, I had to step out of my comfort zone and converse for a few seconds with complete strangers. Luckily, all those negative feelings faded away as more and more people started asking about the “Food Bank” action. It was really great that I was not alone; my partner was near and I felt more self-confident knowing that we all were on the same boat.

In conclusion, this action has helped me develop in more ways than one. I gained more knowledge about the action itself, about the support funds, what people desperately need and the ways of donating and helping out. I also developed my creative and communicative skills, that will help me in the future when doing similar jobs or when working with a group of people I am not familiar with. It gave me more self-confidence and, most importantly, let me serve my community as a citizen.  

What is this?

Hi there!

Welcome to the CAS blog of the 9^th  generation of International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme in Didzdvaris gymnasium. We, the IB‘9, will post our written blogs from our CAS related activities during the years of 2013-2015. But firstly, what is the IBDP?

International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme, or IBDP for short, is a programme which students attend during their 11^th and 12^th school years. Students are able to choose the IBDP programme instead of national school programme, which is what we did. An IBDP school has to choose one of three languages, which the school could teach the students in. The languages are English, French and Spanish. Our school offers the IBDP in English. Each IB student has to pass exams from 6 subjects that they chose and they have to submit a ToK (Theory of Knowledge) essay, an EE (Extended Essay) and they have to have 150 CAS hours. Now a bit more formally, the IB mission statement states: “The International Baccalaureate aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect.” In short, we are students who are willing to learn, to express their ideas, to widen their understanding of the world.

You probably are now questioning what CAS is. Well it is one of the compulsory components of the IBDP in order to get a diploma, not a certificate. CAS – Creativity, Action and Service – is a very interesting thing where each person is able to discover himself in different activities, improve a lot of his skills. IB students organize events, volunteer in organizations like “Food bank” (you can read a blog entry about our voluntary work at this organization), help out at their school or in the city, etc. You will find our entries about our experience in different CAS related activities here. So, if you are interested, I invite you to check out our blog, read about our experiences, maybe learn from our mistakes and widen your world just a little more. 

We hope you will enjoy this blog!

Ieva Poškutė, IB1