Every year our school organizes Bal Mela, a fair/gathering where students from different schools come to visit our school to learn and explore different areas of activity taught and explained by students of our school. This year in 2025 I decided to take part in Bal Mela because first of all, I had a free schedule on the weekend of 8th and 9th Feb (Bal Mela was on 8th Feb). Moreover, I wanted to experience how it is teaching other students from different schools. Hence, I filled the form of Bal Mela and decided to take part in the same. Initially I was allocated to teach easy origami, however, later it was changed to macrame art, something which I hadn’t heard of before and something which I was eager to know more about.

Learning Outcome 1: Identify your own strengths and develop areas for personal growth.
On 8th Feb, the day of the event, after reaching the venue assigned, I was clueless about macrame art with nothing but just the will to learn the same. We had time to learn and sharpen our skills of macrame art before students from other schools arrived, so with the help of teachers and classmates, I understood macrame art and what it is. Macrame art is basically a textile art form which includes knotting of threads in patterns to make it look decorative or to create something functional out of it. As the teachers and classmates performed macrame art themselves, I looked carefully to learn as much as possible. We were supposed to create macrame art for keychains. With the help of my fellow classmates, teachers, and videos on youtube, I was able to understand two thread macrame art where two threads in total are used to create a design around a keychain ring. Just as I was going to test my macrame art skills, I was astonished to see people also doing four thread macrame art. It looked very hard and so without any extra thought, I gave up on the idea of learning four thread macrame art thinking that I might learn it in the future, but of course not now (since I was yet to master the two thread macrame art). I performed my first macrame art on a keychain ring where already the base of the macrame art had been created using two threads after which I had to only knot the threads in a pattern which looks decorative, a task which I accomplished successfully. Even though some of my friends were not able to knot the threads in a decorative pattern, I was able to do it with ease and it became my strength. However, as I attempted to perform macrame art on a second keychain ring which did not have the base made, I struggled in creating the base of two threads on which the knotting design would be made. I realized that my strengths were creating the design and decorating the keychain ring with the threads, while my areas of improvement were creating a base connecting the keychain ring to the two threads and learning four thread macrame art. Coming towards strengths and areas of personal growth during the event while teaching macrame art to the students of other schools, I was able to teach knotting part of the macrame art which I had mastered with ease. I was able to communicate in the language which they preferred, which was Gujarati and while speaking fluent Gujarati, I was able to explain and teach macrame art to the students. I observed how every student was able to perform macrame art on keychain rings after I explained it to them. One area of improvement here would be speed. I was very slow at explaining macrame art to the students because of which our area was congested with a lot of students left to learn macrame art. Even though I noticed the same and was trying to speed up my pace of teaching macrame art which I did to some extent, I couldn’t increase my pace a lot because I feared it would cause a lack of quality in what I teach and I feared that in my hurry to teach fast, students would not be able to learn macrame art in the best way possible.

Learning Outcome 2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process.
The challenges that I had to go through were first of all, I had to learn creating a base of macrame art by joining two threats and the keychain ring in a way where knotting can be done easily afterwards and designs could be made. Before I was able to learn it, students from other schools arrived at our school and some of them came to us to learn macrame art, during this time, while one of my friend Veerat was explaining and teaching how to create a base for macrame art on a keychain ring to the visitors, I was learning it too which I did after observing Veerat and after taking help personally from him as well. While visitors were coming continuously, I was able to overcome my weakness of not being able to create a base for macrame art. Even though it was not as perfect as my friend Veerat, it was still good which could work to create further knotting designs. So within a short period of time only, I worked on my area of improvement and learnt how to create a base, after which I was able to create a full macrame art from the beginning, a skill which I then taught to the students of other schools. Furthermore, I had to speed up my pace of teaching as it was too slow and it just made the space more congested and crowded because many of the visitors were left with learning macrame art. I undertook this challenge and tried my best to teach macrame art as fast as possible while also keeping in mind that I teach everything and that everything is well understood by the visitors, however, I was not able to pace up as I had expected because then it would hinder the learning of students, but I surely did improve my pace to teach faster than before so that more and more students could learn macrame art quickly. This challenged and developed my time management skill.

Learning Outcome 4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences.
At a certain point, in the middle of Bal Mela, I felt like a robot. I was teaching the same thing again and again, in the same language, in the same way, using the same pattern. I was solving doubts continuously. I was performing macrame art to show how it is done again and again and I felt like taking a break. I felt exhausted teaching the same thing to many students while not even changing my sitting position and hence, I wanted to take a long break, but then I saw students of another school coming. This should have made me stand up and say ‘I am done’, however, I embraced the situation and instead of giving up, I showed commitment and perseverance to the task given. I remained calm and for the sake of the students, so that they could learn something new, so that they could learn macrame art, I gathered more threads and keychain rings to teach more macrame art instead of taking a break.

Learning Outcome 5: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively.
While teaching alone, even though I could create the base for macrame art on the keychain ring, I had not mastered it yet like I mastered knotting the threads after the base is made. My base was good but not great while my knots and designs were great. My friend Veerat who was teaching macrame art to students just beside me was great at creating the base, while not so great at knotting the threads and giving a proper design to the thread attached to the keychain ring. Therefore, we both decided to collaborate and work together where Veerat would create the base and I would create the design later after the base is made. Veerat would gather keychain rings and threads, he would then work on creating the base attaching two threads with one keychain ring in such a way that a base is created after which knotting of the threads can be done on it which would create designs. Then I would take the base of the thread and keychain ring and use my skills to create a decorative design, completing the whole macrame art. This way we did not only create perfect keychain rings / keychains to give to the visitors (students), but we also saved more time than we were able to save individually, giving us both a great advantage. We both were able to work great together, we both were able to understand each other’s strengths and limitations, using which we turned our limitations into a common strength and created the perfect macrame art.

Conclusion –
To conclude, this service was great, it was great teaching macrame art to students of different schools. I got the experience of teaching others which I had wanted to get before I enrolled in this event. Bal Mela gave me the opportunity to learn something new and something as creative as macrame art and then use the same to improve my communication skills to teach the same to students of different schools. It surely was tiring as I had to create a lot of macrame art key chain models in less time for a lot of students, however, that is only what made Bal Mela even more interesting, challenging me and my time management skill.