Reflections

SThe delegates from Scotch College assembled a wonderful blog of their experiences while in the USA, including the conference and some extra travel. This can be found here. See the other responses from students and staff below.

FEEDBACK SURVEY RESPONSES
Many students and some staff responded to a feedback survey about their experience at the 2018 GAIL conference at KUA. Below is a summary of their comments:

Student responses:

Describe GAIL in one sentence.

It was an action packed week that allowed me to learn about myself, other people and other cultures.
A great experience for the mind.
GAIL provides the opportunity to understand both yourself and different cultures.
Finding new perspectives in a variety of ways.
Getting a real global view around the world, developing yourself in ways you wouldn’t think is possible.
An opportunity to get to know people who I would never have previously and by doing so, learn more about myself and how I operate.
A life changing experience.
GAIL provides a forward thinking group of students with a common goal.
A fun, rewarding experience that allowed students to make long lasting friends.
Building up to one strong team.
The most amazing experience I have ever had.
An opportunity to meet different people and talk about issues.
An eye opening experience, educational as well as social.
AMAZING
A fun way to learn about issues but also learn about the world and people around you.
An incredible week packed with fun activities.
An amazing experience!
A great experience and adventure.
GAIL is busy, fun-filled and bursting with personality.
GAIL is a place where meaningful conversations take place in a safe, understanding environment.
Life changing experience
A phenomenal experience where I’ve got to learn about not only myself but also many other cultures.
An opportunity to meet amazing people!
An incredibly rewarding experience.
An opportunity to develop yourself and getting to learn new learners.
An opportunity to travel explore learn and apply.
Life changing and eye opening.
A fantastic opportunity which should not be missed.
An extremely insightful and thought provoking experience.
An opportunity to grow and expand your knowledge and potential.
A fun and exciting place filled with lots of opportunities.
Once in life opportunity to meet, work, and make friends with other culture.
It was a great experience I will never forget.
GAIL is interesting to learn from different people and schools as well as make friends.
Such an awesome opportunity, grateful for everything I have learned and the cultures I have been immersed in and all the friends I have met.
An incredible experience to make lifelong friends.
A new way to get together, enhance your knowledge and increase your perspective of things.
It was an amazing experience where I could learn about other people and cultures as well as myself.
A wonderful global aggregation where youngs get to share ideas and learn from each other to be greater than who they originally are!
Physically tiring but new experiences.
It is educational and fun.
Life long friendships.
People.
A once in a lifetime experience!
Students from around the world learning about each other as they work together in order to achieve a common goal.
GAIL gives us the opportunity to realizes first hand all the similarities we have as humans.
A fulfillment of my summer.

How has the Convention affected you? Describe your GAIL experience.

It has built up my confidence and allowed me to appreciate all cultures.
I have become more positive.
Has provided me with a deeper understanding of myself.
It was amazing and made me more confident to give things ago and put my hand up even when I wasn’t sure.
I have made so many new friends and my confidence has improved so much. More importantly I learned about leading from behind.
I have become more aware of my resilience and ability to bond and connect with a broad variety of people and improve my self confidence.
It’s connected me with students from around the world allowing me to further my understanding of the world we live in today and our future prospects
The convention has allowed me to become more like myself and to be able to make new friends that are going to last for life. The convention was helpful when discussing ethical dilemmas.
Made me think in new different ways.
It has given be a great sense of making right decisions.
I have become more extroverted.
I now know how I like making friends.
It involved me in numerous cultures.
It has made me more comfortable talking to other people.
I’ve learnt so much about myself and about communicating with new people.
Got to know about myself a little better and had A LOT of fun and made new friends😊
Even though it turned out to be different from what I expected (social wise) I'm happy to say that it all worked out to be amazing by the end of it. I've learned a lot about myself and others and I'm glad I got the chance to analyse it all and be part of the fun.
Allowed me to grow in confidence and surround myself with people I’m similar with but within a diverse environment
The convention through all it had to offer helped me explore myself and be more self aware. I am now much more confident in interacting with new people from various cultures.
Amazing.
It’s made me aware of how different every school is whether it’s International, Boarding or Day.
I learnt a lot and met some lovely people
It’s made me more of a people-person.
It was a brilliant experience which allowed me to interact with other people and to indulge on different opinions from different people.
I've learned more of myself and how can be the best version of a leader who can make well informed decisions.
I have learnt so much about ethical dilemmas, and it has shown me the conflicts people can have in a workplace. It has given me some direction as to where I want to head towards in the future!
It has allowed me to meet like-minded people from different schools from across the globe which has allowed me to learn more about myself.
It really opens my eyes to other cultures, even though they are different many people are the same
It was an amazing experience filled with fun, education, and variety
It taught me to be more open and accepting.
it taught me how to work with other people especially from other cultures.
It has caused me to become more accepting and open to more people as well as leading me to understand ethics and make lifelong friends
The GAIL convention has opened my mind to different dilemmas in real life situations. It makes me understand how to deal with them such as by taking into account viewpoints and factors. It also made me make some friends. However, sometimes I feel like I could not fit into some groups.
It has enlightened my point of view of the world and of every individual
I have become a lot more confident in the person that I am.
It has helped me learn more about being a leader and has shown me a new way of thinking and solving problems
The GAIL convention has made me more aware of my capabilities and strengths
GAIL has really pushed me out of my comfort zone that I have learned to step up to raise my own voices.
I don't know if we all have to be leaders. It made me think about ethical decisions.
I have more self confidence.
I have grown to be a more confident person and learn to mature with my ideas ethics.
I have learnt a lot about myself and how I relate to other cultures. I also learned a lot about my leadership style.
It has made me more aware of the sad realities people face in the world today. Such as ethical dilemmas.
I have met many people whom I hope to keep in contact with and see again soon. I have learned about places from around the world and re-evaluated my approach to conflicts and dilemmas. I now am able to see how a group should work together.
I built so many bonds, that I hope will last a lifetime, with people from all over the world in just one week
It made me a more self-aware, trusting and confident person.

Faculty Responses to the same survey.

Describe GAIL in one sentence.

Awesome!
The unity and bonding of nations from all around the world!
A comprehensive, in-depth collaboration of minds that highly values discourse with a global perspective.
Engaging, stimulating and fun.
A unique opportunity to collaborate and learn from others all around the world.
Hope. Despite the current political landscape in the world, the GAIL Convention gives me hope that we can right the proverbial ship.
GAIL is an opportunity to learn, to collaborate and to make lifelong international friends.
GAIL is FUN! It's about lifelong experiential learning while building deep meaningful connections.

How has the Convention affected you? Describe your GAIL experience.

Relationship building
GAIL has made me into an even more open-minded and culturally sensitive individual!
An amazingly, high-quality exploration of ideas, through a global lens.
It has inspired me to collaborate more with international staff and promote GAIL more.
A wonderfully positive experience. It was fantastic to reconnect with the other champions again after last year. I particularly love witnessing the transformation of the students who start the week as strangers but end the week as inseparable friends. They certainly develop and grow as they learn through the programme.
Though incredibly stressful, seeing the smiles on the students' faces and repeatedly hearing from the adults and students that they had a wonderfully memorable time made it all worthwhile.
I have had the opportunity to bond with the other champions and really to get to know them so well!! I absolutely loved having the quality time as champions together, because it enabled us to plan and to come up with creative ideas for the year ahead.
Given me skills and understandings that I can apply to my teaching profession and also personally. It gave me the opportunity to meet and connect again with inspiring and dedicated educators and it left me profoundly humbled by the ability for young people to love, laugh and learn from each other, regardless of their diversity - it proves that diversity isn't a barrier, it is a strength. I loved it!