[IB9] The first IB convention or why the IBDP is awesome beyond the academic side.

Klaudijus Rulys -

On February 15 the first ever Lithuanian IB convention was held, which was 2 days long and as the school which has the IBDP for several years now, we got invited as well. Seven students from IB1 were chosen to represent the school. But before we went to the event, we had some preparation to do, namely, we had to create a short film about the IBDP in our school. Me, Kristijonas Lotiukas, Augustė Bagdonaitė, Kamilė Inčiūraitė, Dovydas Jokšas, Greta Timaitė and Tomas Bilkauskas rounded up some people from our class and did a little questionnaire, which we taught was the quickest and most effective way to gather information. Questions such as “What is the IBDP to you?” “Why did you choose the IBDP over the national program?” and “How to spell International Baccalaureate?”(My favourite one) were included. We used our school’s radio club, because it had the best acoustics for recording the answers. All in all, it took us about 2 hours to film the answers and another 2 or so hours to make it more appealing. In the end, I was really happy with our final result, the short film, because it turned out really entertaining and I think showed the IBDP students opinions about the program really well.

When I thought about the IB convention as an event, I expected and event of 50 or so students sharing their ideas, opinions and experiences about the IBDP. I got what I expected, though perhaps to a lesser extent. There were only about 20 of us, which is not bad, this made the atmosphere cosier, at least for me. Once we all checked in, we were shortly briefed about the activities that are to take place. The plan included such activities as a creative workshop based on the IB learners profile, a meeting with an alumni, the planning of a CAS activity to unite all the IB schools in Lithuania and various lessons, discussions Also, in between the discussions we had some games and a tiny bit of free time to get to know each other better. What was really surprising for me, is that at the night of day 1, Kaunas Jesuit Gymnasium held “The battle for independence” to commemorate the events that happened on February 16 in Lithuania. We often referenced to the battle of independence as to “the hunger games” and the whole idea of this game was interesting to me and I believe I may use this idea when organising future events in our school. Because I was really tired after the creative workshops and discussions, I wasn’t in the mood to play this game. Despite this, my team won the first place!

Although there were a lot of good moments, there were also some awkward and confusing moments. The free time that was given, at least for me was not enough to get acquainted with other participants, which for me was really sad. This caused an awkward situation at the end of the convention when we played a game, where you basically have to tell the chosen person’s name and tell him what you liked about him and what you wish for him. I had to tell something about a person who I saw only 2-3 times and never really got to talk with. What I found confusing during the discussions is that quite a lot of people are still switching subjects, are not sure about their universities and overall aren’t planning their future as much as I think me and my classmates are.

On the other hand, remembering the best moments of the convention, the first thought that comes to mind is definitely the sleeping bag fights right before sleep on the first night. Boys and girls had to sleep in different rooms and the guys got quite a lot of mattresses. We laid out all of the mattresses and we saw that it covered the whole floor. So we thought of doing a sleeping bag fight tournament, where you have to remain in your sleeping bag and get your opponent on his back. Just like real wrestling… just in sleeping bags. Another fun moment was when we were discussing our subject choices, university choices and the different approaches to CAS. We all comprehended CAS in a very similar way. During day 2, we were split into random groups and had to come up with 2 ideas for CAS which would include all of the IB schools in Lithuania. There were a lot of really good suggestions and I hope at least some of them, with our contribution, will come true.

Overall, the IB convention was interesting to say the least. There was a lot of fun moments, interesting people and different perceptions of the IBDP.

Here are some moments from the event: 

[IB9] A hike to Kurtuvėnai Regional Park

Gabrielė Baristaitė -

The 25th of January is known as midwinter. This day marks the middle of winter, it means that there is half of winter left till spring. There is one myth about this day. It is known that on this day a badger comes out of its cave and if the day is sunny he recognizes his shadow and goes back to the cave. It means that spring will come later. But if the day is foggy, the badger comes out from the cave and takes a walk. Thus, we can expect that spring will come earlier.   

Each midwinter “Aukuras club” organizes a hike to commemorate midwinter and to check whether the myth has some truth in it.  It became a tradition to do this every year. This club aims to protect and handle the heritage of nature. Club does this by organizing hikes, seminars and competitions related to nature preservation.  Also, club contributes to the activities of Kurtuvėvai Regional Park. The midwinter hike is organized annually in the Kurtuvėnai regional park because the park has a lot of beautiful lakes and hills. During the hike twelve lakes are visited and also people attempt to find out whether the spring will come earlier or later.

This year my classmate Eglė and I have decided to participate in the midwinter hike. I have not known what I should expect because it was the first time when I went to the hike. I thought that the hike in winter time is very unusual but also it is a great chance to try something new. The hike has started from the early morning. The morning was sunny, so following the idea of the myth we expect that spring will come later. The people who wanted to join the hike had to be in the car parking near Pageluvis Lake. The coordinator of the hike introduced the plan and we started the hike from the first lake Pageluvis.  National and local television were also interested in the predictions about spring. They decided to create a coverage of the hike.  During the hike we have visited twelve lakes, we have seen some boars and also we had one incident on the lake. 

When we were standing on one of the lakes, and while our coordinator was talking about the lake, suddenly everyone heard ice breaking. Some of the group lied down, some ran to the shore. Fortunately, it was only a sound of ice breaking, about which we had quite a laugh each time we went on different lakes. I have learnt that lying down is the best and safest way to keep safe in emergencies of ice breaking. I think this was the most memorable event during the hike for everyone who participated.

This hike helped us to get to know more about Kurtuvėnai Regional Park; we have seen striking nature scenes and the amazing lakes in winter time. During this activity I, personally, have improved my collaboration skills and also have increased my ability to deal with emotions in unpredictable situations. I am very happy that I had an opportunity to join the midwinter hike in Kurtuvėnai Regional Park because of the amazing moments we all shared on that day. Next year I will participate too, and I advise everyone to join it as well, to experience moments that will be remembered for a long time!

[IB9] Fundraising for the victims of typhoon Haiyan in Philippines

Dovydas Jokšas -

The human‘s nature is to look only around himself and care only about his own environment. CAS tries to make students be different by developing caring and open-mindedness in everyday life. The activity that I am going to write about is closely related to the IB mission of intercultural understanding – me Dovydas Jokšas and my classmates – Vaiva Zokaitė and Karolina Vitkevičiūtė - were doing fundraising for the victims of typhoon Haiyan in Philippines.

Two months ago Vaiva Zokaitė, my classmate, offered me to organise a fundraising action in Didzdvaris gymnasium to help victims in Philippines. Typhoon Haiyan hit the islands of Philippines on the 8th of November with the speed of 300 km/h. Many big cities in the country were destroyed, including the infrastructure – transport, healthcare, education and many other systems. It was the deadliest natural disaster in the history of Philippines, because at least 6000 people were killed and few thousands are still missing. Over a million lost their homes, many have lost their jobs and families. The damage of millions of US dollars was made. We thought that it would be a great chance to help those people. We searched for the information what would be the best way to help the victims. The organisations that were working there (particularly – Red Cross organisation)  announced that financial help would be the best, because sending products to the Philippines where the transport system was mainly destroyed would be complicated – the aid had to be centralised with the help of money. Therefore, we started to brainstorm what is the best way to collect as much money as possible. We thought of charity boxes which would be placed in the corridors of our school, but we abandoned this idea because the previous practise in our school shows that it does not attract much money. Finally, we decided to make presentations in every class, so that students would get enough information about the tragedy and would decide whether they want to contribute or not. The organisation that we decided to donate to was the Red Cross of Philippines. Its’ goal was to ensure food, clean water, shelter and medicine for 100 000 affected families.

In Didzdvaris gymnasium there are over twenty classes, thus it was not easy to organise presentation for every one of them. With the help of four our gymnasium‘s class coordinators we arranged the time of presentations in every class meeting – all coordinators accepted this idea very well. From the 18th of November the presentations started. At first we were not sure if the students in classes will be interested in these presentations and the idea itself. As we started the presentations, we were pleasantly surprised how nicely students accepted it. It was great to see how willingly many students were donating the money to help the people who are over 9000 km away from Lithuania. After few days from the start of our action, due to the huge load of work, our classmate Karolina Vitkevičiūtė joined to help us. After four weeks of hard work we have made an extra presentation for the teachers of our gymnasium and by that ended the fundraising. The very last part of our project was to count the money and send it to the Red Cross – we have counted 950 Lithuanian Litas which was a huge amount of money taking into account that it was donated by the community of school. Just after the Christmas we sent the money to the Lithuanian Red Cross from where it was transferred to the Red Cross of Philippines.

Such events as this are a great way to help other people. After this voluntary action the three of us were really happy of the result we achieved. It was a great example for us that with a lot of effort so much can be done – for the money that we donated a few thousands of food rations or a few hundreds of medical kits can be bought. We understood how easy it is sometimes to improve the life of others.

[IB9] Annual Siauliai Didzdvaris Gymnasium IB community meeting.

Karolina Vitkevičiūtė- 

27th December at Didzdvaris gymnasium is a special day.   DG IBDP students gather together at the annual IB Meet. This year, 2013, the event was organized for the sixth time. Traditionally, not only do present students participate at the meeting, but they also help at the preparation process. Some of us got the assembly hall ready, some prepared snacks, others greeted the guests, and me and my classmate Ieva hosted the Diploma giving ceremony.

Events on 27th December began with newly established Didzdvaris gymnasium IB Alumni club meeting. After that Ilona Radavičiūtė (5^th IB generation student) announced the beginning of the IB Conference. We heard inspiring stories by:

o   Aidas Medžiūnas (1^st IB generation student, now studying Mathematics in Vilnius University), who told that people shouldn't be afraid of making mistakes.

o   Dominykas Gudavičius (6^th IB generation student, now studying Bio-mechanics in Vilnius Gediminas Technical University), who told about the importance of national defense.

o   Ligita Ivanauskaitė (5th IB generation student, finished Bachelor of Science in Psychology in Royal Holloway University of London, now teaching Psychology in DG IBDP), who told about a research on children that she had done in the University.

o   Simas Simanauskas (5th IB generation student, finished International relations and political science in the University of Sheffield, now working with the program “Kurk Lietuvai”), who told that experience of living abroad can be very useful for further life in Lithuania.

The last but not least event on IB Meet was the 7th IB generation Diploma giving ceremony. We saw wonderful performances by:

o   Kamilė Inčiūraitė (Current IB1 student)

o  Gabrielė Andriūnaitė (Current IB1 student) and Vykintas Jasaitis (7th IB generation student, now studying Jazz in Klaipeda University)

o   Greta Keraitė (6th IB generation student, now studying Chemistry in Vilnius University)

Great speeches were given by:

o   Paulius Urbonas (7^th IB generation student, who is now studying Economics in New York University of Abu Dhabi)

o   Kęstutis Balynas (former History teacher in DG IBDP)

o   Kamilė Šeraitė (6^th IB generation student, president of the DG IB Alumni club, now studying Political Science at Vilnius University), who announced the Alumni club officially opened and invited all the members to make an oath.

o   Rima Tamošiūnienė (Diploma Program Coordinator), who gave the Diplomas to the 7^th IB generation students with the help of school principal Vitalis Balsevičius.

To sum up, I can say that the event went very well! As present students of IBDP, me and my classmates got motivated by the stories of former students and we are glad that we got a chance to be a part of this event and its fluency. 

DG IB 7th generation receiving their diplomas

6^th IB generation student Dominykas Gudavičius giving a speech about the importance of national defense

 Gabrielė Andriūnaitė and Vykintas Jasaitis giving a wonderful performance

[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.