Even after two years teaching at the vocational high school, there are still plenty of students who struggle to introduce themselves to me in English. “How are you today?” I ask. Sometimes students will respond with, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” I found that response rather discouraging at first; but now I am happy that answer, knowing it could have been worse. Some students won’t even respond to my questions in English or Indonesian. They are still too nervous to speak with me after all this time. I packed those frustrations--along with a week’s worth of clothes--when going to Surabaya for training conferences. I quickly learned after meeting other volunteers that I wasn’t alone; they were experiencing similar situations at their schools. The conferences were strategically placed so that volunteers could join together and vent frustrations at particularly rough patches during service. Whether we had just ended the “honeymoon” phase, reached the one-year “mid-service crisis,” or had only three months left and host families still didn’t know our name (this isn’t exactly surprising within the volunteer community), I always looked forward to the conferences. Volunteers gather at conferences to attend sessions on lesson-planning, classroom management and project development. Staff carefully plans and peppers words of encouragement and motivation throughout presentations. Peace Corps staff reminds volunteers multiple times at every conference that change is often small and hard to detect. Staff frequently provides this reminder, and--from my experience--volunteers need to hear it, because it is easy to get caught up in the notion during service that our work is doing nothing. “What have I accomplished in two years,” I ask myself, “if students in one of my English classes still can’t tell me how old they are?” Staff reminds us that Peace Corps’ sustainable approach to development is all about the long term. Many of the students at my school yell, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” in response to every one of my questions; but now they have the confidence to respond and interact with a foreigner. Maybe one of those students will meet a foreigner on a university campus or warehouse in the future, and a conversation between the two could lead to a new opportunity for that former student. It’s a lot of hypotheticals, but it goes to show how I cannot possibly measure the true impact I have on my community. And that is incredibly frustrating. There were days when I questioned being in Indonesia, week-long periods equating my service as pointless, and month-long droughts when I doubted the effectiveness of my teaching. I understand that change is immeasurable, too small to see on a daily basis. I looked for something during service to help provide reassurances that I was making a difference; that the school and community would be different after I leave Indonesia; that I left a lasting, sustainable influence at my school. That is easier said than done. Even if I had an idea, people at school needed to be on board to ensure the change endured long after my return to the United States. If I had thought about an idea on my own and worked hard to fulfill that vision, great. What would have happened if the teachers and students at my school weren’t one hundred percent on board? The flame likely would have died out shortly after I left the country. I needed to take time at site to observe, ask questions, and listen to people talk about resources available at school. My patience paid off. One day in October 2017 during an English teacher meeting, one of my counterparts shared how she wished the school had an “English Room” for students. The school could not provide opportunities for motivated students, she said, to learn English outside of the three hours of instruction each week. Intrigued my her comments, I followed up with her after the meeting to get an idea of what she thought would benefit the school community. What I didn’t know at the time was that this idea would evolve into a project--and near obsession--that would consume the remainder of my Peace Corps service. Mas Wendhi and I submitted an application to attend the Project Design Management Workshop in December 2017 to help learn how to expand on this nascent idea. We submitted a short narrative explaining our idea, what goals we hoped to achieve, and how the project would benefit our school. Keeping sustainability at the forefront, I strived to work at every level of this project with a counterpart. I figured that if a teacher committed time to a conference application, proposal, or event, then he or she would be more invested in the result. Mas Wendhi expressed an early interest in developing the idea and the two of us ended up working together for the entirety of the project. All of his participation was voluntary, for a love of teaching and his students. No aspect of this project would have been realized without Mas Wendhi’s unwavering commitment. The three-day workshop in December went well. We learned about how to set realistic yet motivating goals, and how to monitor the progress towards achieving those goals with objectives and indicators. With sustainability in mind, Peace Corps staff reminded us not to force project developments; the project needs to evolve at the same pace as community members’ thinking in order to generate widespread support. Many projects fall by the wayside, one staffer explained, because the community grows disinterested or wants to focus on other things. That is okay, despite being frustrating for volunteers. Mas Wendhi and I realized something important during the conference. How do we know that students would use a brand new English Room at school? No students at the school had done anything with English other than the courses required by the government. In other words, how sustainable would an English Room be? We decided that it was important to take a long approach to the English Room. We began discussing the formation of an English Club as a litmus test to gage the student body’s general interest in learning English outside of the classroom. If English Club was successful, we agreed, then we could return to the idea of an English Room. Mas Wendhi told me a school English Club has always been his dream. An English Room, he said, would be an even bigger dream. We returned for second semester motivated to begin English Club. We discussed our long-term strategy with Pak Nurhasyim, the school principal. He agreed with our plan. Pak Nurhasyim always provided enthusiastic support for our work. The English Club and English Room would never have existed without his commitment. Mas Wendhi wrote a purpose statement and Pak Nurhasyim agreed to allocate school funds to establish English Club, making it an official school extracurricular. This was a big deal, because the money from school was a sure sign of support. We didn’t need to worry about the administration pulling back on the original commitment. English Club funding was included in the school’s semester budget, providing enough money to fund four teachers for the semester. Additionally, the school would continue to provide money for English Club each year, ensuring funds after my departure. The news sounded like sustainable change to me! Mas Wendhi found three other English teachers to agree to help lead English Club: Bu Nina, Pak Rusdhyanta and Mas Kahfi. I went around to every classroom to announce an introductory meeting for English Club. It was the beginning of my second semester at school, so many of the students had not had any experience interacting with me until that point. I made a fool out of myself, hoping that would break down some barriers and intrigue students to show up for our first meeting the following week. The mixture of a yearning to learn English, and a desire to watch the crazy American act goofy, brought more than 150 students to our introductory English Club meeting. It was more than any of the teachers had expected. We took attendance and student information that day. The teachers decided to split the students up into four respective English Clubs: Bu Nina took grade twelve students, Mas Wendhi was assigned to grade eleven, and Pak Rusdhyanta and Mas Kahfi each took half of the grade ten students. The school administration asked for grade twelve English Club to concentrate on preparing for the national exam, grade eleven to focus on speaking, and grade ten needed to “be inspired to learn English,” essentially giving us freedom to do whatever with the lowest grade. The teachers originally assigned me a grade ten English Club, but later decided it would be best for me to work with all four teachers. I liked that idea. They were calling the shots! Four workdays of my week that semester ended with English Club. It was nice to end the days with a group of motivated students! That semester of English Club was rocky. It takes a lot of coordination to get four teachers plus one Place Corps Volunteer on the same page. In a society where punctuality is uncommon and meetings rarely happen on the original date, a lot of cracks started to show in our foundation. It was difficult to get teachers to commit to preparing for English Club before it actually took place (I still struggle with convincing teachers to lesson plan for regular class, so this shouldn’t have been a surprise). Teachers ended up asking me minutes before English Club for a plan, assuming I would be there with lesson materials and a fun activity. I didn’t have the time, nor the innovative intellect, to create fun and engaging activities for three different levels on a weekly basis. By the end of the semester, all four English Clubs were doing the exact same activities. The lack of organization and inspiring activities likely accounted for the steep decline in attendance. Less than ten students showed up for English Club by the end of the semester. The end of the school year provided an opportunity for Mas Wendhi and I to reflect on the first semester of English Club and contemplate how we could do better the following semester. We created a syllabus, outlining monthly themes and weekly activities. We didn’t get much input from the other English Club teachers. I decided to ignore the administration’s request to meet specific criteria with each grade. We couldn’t meet that requirement without the support from all four English Club teachers. The second school year of my Peace Corps service began in July 2018, and that meant a completely new grade of students to recruit for English Club. I did the same thing as the previous semester, introducing myself to over 700 grade ten students in twenty-one classes. I also reminded the students in grades eleven and twelve again to join. About 150 students joined for the introductory meeting. Except for a dozen students in grade twelve, all were from grade ten. No students from grade eleven made an appearance. After collecting attendance, the teachers agreed to have one section for grade twelve students and three sections for grade ten. I continued to help with each section. The second semester of English Club proved much more successful than the first. Attendance remained high throughout the semester’s entirety, which was a huge win in our eyes. Students consistently showed up for English Club because we were having fun. We divided the semester into two themes: Environmental Awareness and Professional Development. There was a “fun day” at the end of each unit when we left the school grounds for an event. The environment-centered unit included sessions with Michael Jackson’s “Earth Song,” a nature scavenger hunt, and environment Bingo. We spent a day cleaning up garbage alongside the roads of our neighborhood to celebrate the conclusion of our Environmental Awareness unit. The Professional Development unit included sessions for students to read and write cover letters for jobs, and forming lesson plans for teaching English classes. The students ended the Professional Development unit by creating and leading an English camp for kids at two nearby elementary schools. That Sunday ended up being one of my favorite days of service. In October 2018--one year after submitting an application to attend the PDM conference--the administration, Mas Wendhi and I decided it was time to pursue the long-time goal of creating an English Room for the school. Mas Wendhi and I dusted off our notes from the Project Development Management Conference and wrote a grant proposal to submit to Peace Corps. We created surveys to assess community needs and distributed them to teachers and students to complete. We compiled their answers and factored that into what we hoped to include in the room. The administration was on board to contribute twenty-five percent of the project’s overall cost, which Peace Corps requires in order for schools to receive grant funding. We submitted our application by the middle of October. Students rewarded us for our hard work when most of them showed up for English Club again this semester--the third of the Club’s existence. The teachers were excited to see students still interested in participating. We received news in December that our grant proposal was approved. Great news! It turned out that acquiring the funds proved harder than expected. The government shutdown froze Peace Corps headquarters’ ability to process grant proposals and distribute funds. We spent all of January, and most of February, wondering if we would ever secure the money to fulfill Mas Wendhi’s dream. English Club continued as normal. We eventually received the funds near the end of February. Now we were working with a deadline; the project needed to be completed, and a final report issued to Peace Corps, by April. That meant less than two months to finish the project. It seemed easy to do at the end of February; but looking back now, I see how naive I was to think so. The administration began the project by remodeling the old classroom. The school laid a new tile floor, and installed new ceiling panels, electric wiring, and window frames. The art teacher painted an inspiration-themed mural. We used the grant money to procure the room’s educational resources, technology, and furnishings. We spent over a month collecting receipts for every expense. The receipts added up when we were making purchases that amounted to less than two U.S. dollars. All of the receipts were categorized, arranged in chronological order, scanned, and uploaded to an online account for a final report. We planned a geography unit for English Club this semester, using maps and globes every week to lead some type of activity. I consider myself somewhat of a geography buff, so I was very much looking forward to this unit. We looked at maps of the world and Indonesia. Students learned words for describing a country or city’s location. We also learned about the weather, rivers, rainforests, mountains, and lakes from each continent. We spent several weeks looking at maps of Indonesia. We focused on different islands and their provinces. I frequently compared Indonesia’s 34 provinces to the United States’ fifty states. I had so much fun drawing parallels between the two nations. We capped off the geography unit with my favorite project: the world map mural. The mural is a staple of many volunteers’ service, and money was allocated from our grant to complete the project. I was excited to take part in this Peace Corps tradition! We began the mural in March, but Mas Wendhi and I had started planning for the project much earlier. We spent a lot of time searching for maps and drawing ideas for style, colors, and size. We used the English Club geography unit to identify what students knew and didn’t know about the world. It was our goal for the map to teach students something new with just a quick glance. The wall is positioned in the courtyard, where all students walk past to get to class. We asked ourselves what we could do to make sure students picked up new information during their walks in and out of school. I picked up that the students’ general knowledge of the world is rather limited, which made it all the more important to create a practical map. Most of the English Club students were confused about the differences between countries and continents. Mas Wendhi and I decided to assign one color scheme to each continent, thus distinguishing them from one another in the mural. Students knew about various world landmarks--the pyramids, Statue of Liberty, Great Wall of China, etc.--but could not point out their location on a map. The art teacher painted images of those landmarks right on the map so students can see where exactly they are located. The map mural project provided a platform for some of the best conversations I have had with my students: one student asked why Palestine consisted of two separate territories; another wondered by there was a North Korea and a South Korea. I enjoyed seeing the students so dedicated to finishing the map. Widya brought a pair of pants to school one day to wear under her skirt so she could climb up on the scaffold and finish the country outlines. Gaya became obsessed with Kazakhstan, insisting that only she paint the country and its name. Adib was transfixed on the several micro countries scattered throughout Europe. Erik insisted on outlining all the island nations in Oceania with white paint. They made me smile so often. I have spent this semester trying to figure out how English Club can be stronger in the future. Two of the four teachers have completely dropped out of the picture (although they still receive money from the school for “helping” with English Club). This leaves Mas Wendhi and Mas Kahfi to carry the load. I help them, but I give reminders that I will only be here for one more week! As the appointed leader of English Club, Mas Wendhi knows he needs to make changes to the staff structure. He thinks it would be best if just the two of them lead the four English Club sections. This change will make it easier to coordinate staff meetings and projects. I wholeheartedly agree. We weren’t able to arrange a meeting with all four teachers once this whole semester. It will be nice to have only two teachers--both committed to English Club--calling the shots. We plan to hold elections this weekend for officer positions. Mas Wendhi wants the students to elect an English Club President, Secretary, and Social Media Director to help carry the load. Mas Wendhi and I spent a lot of time these past three semesters tracking attendance, recruiting new members, and sharing the Club’s accomplishments with the rest of the school. It will be beneficial and sustainable to have designated students to help do this in the future. There are plenty of leaders in English Club who plan to run for these positions. As for the English Room, Mas Wendhi and I thought about sustainability during every step of the project. We thought about it so much, in fact, that the new space isn’t called the English Room; it’s the school’s brand new Multipurpose Room. The change happened for a variety of reasons. Neither of us believed the room would be utilized enough if it was only for English Club. The more the room is used, we think, the better. Organisasi Siswa Intra Sekolah (OSIS) is Indonesia’s version of student council. These students assist the school administration with anything from school ceremonies to daily attendance. They don’t have their own space or computer to work on assignments from administration, so they often commandeer the health center and take over the nurse’s computer. The multipurpose room provides their own special work space. We used some of the grant money to purchase wireless microphones and a set of speakers for presentations. Staff generally had to borrow equipment from other departments in order to have a suitable sound system for meetings and presentations. Now there is a permanent set of equipment in the multipurpose room for teacher meetings. The bookshelves in the room’s “reading corner” have dictionaries for students to use. Many of the automotive mechanic and computer software textbooks contain diagrams solely in English. The teachers hoped the room could provide technical dictionaries that contain the special language from their textbooks. We hope these modifications make the room pragmatic for everyone at school, which in turn makes the multipurpose room a sustainable endeavor. It has been difficult to identify where I have made an impact in my community. I do not hold much confidence when it comes to improving students’ English skills, especially after hearing many of them struggle to answer, “How are you today?” The multipurpose room, however, is something that I can point to for assurance. The room is something that didn’t exist when I arrived at school two years ago; it will be here after I’m gone. It makes me nervous to leave so shortly after the room is done. If we had done the project a year ago, then that would have left more time to hold English Club events and other organization activities in the multipurpose room before I leave. But at the same time, I do not think it would have been wise to invest U.S. taxpayer dollars in a project before widespread school support grew for the project. It will be up to Mas Wendhi, Pak Kahfi, and the current students to continue building on our successes of the past two years. I trust they are motivated like me to get as much use out of the Multipurpose Room as possible. I am eager to see what they will accomplish. Shout-Outs:
SO to the Bucks for moving on to the Eastern Conference Finals! SO to my fellow ID11 VAC members for wrapping up our last meeting of service. ESO to the ID12 VAC members! The Council is in good hands. HSO to my friends for finishing their graduate programs! I am so impressed. HMFSO to both of my siblings for getting full-time jobs with benefits! I will be a proud, jobless, homeless older brother in ten days.
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