What a Wonderful World....

Put one more tack on the map (or torn up post-it in my case since I can't damage the walls in my fancy-pants apartment...but I digress). Last week, I traveled with fellow ELF, Jonthon, to the city of Kupang in West Timor. This trip was simultaneously the furthest East and the most rural part of Indonesia I had been to. We were there to conduct a three-day English camp and teacher training for some high schools in and around the city. 

What a better way to open up this trip than by actually visiting a high school. Lucky for us, there are two Fulbright English Teaching Assistants (ETAs Victor and Mia) teaching in high schools in the area. On the first day we decided to go check out Victor's school. After a very long and uncomfortable ojek ride - we got lost and had to stop to renegotiate the price several times (well, Jonthon did this as his bahasa is far superior to mine)- we finally arrived at the opening of a dirt road which would eventually lead us to Victor's school. We met Victor and walked down the dirt road to his school. 

 

Victor's school had about eight classrooms, two of which were located in this pole barn with a tin roof...It rains in Kupang... a lot.                         Victor, being the stuff that Fulbrights are made of, takes it all in stride. Despite that he can't hear himself think, let alone talk, in this tin shack, he makes it work.

Rain aside, Victor is up against teaching English to students who have no reason to believe that they will actually ever use English. These students have never left their island, and since Kupang is not the tourism capital of Indonesia (we were the only bules around for miles), learning English rates pretty low on their priority list. Still, with no motivation, photocopied books (if they're lucky), upwards of forty kids per class, and spotty electricity, we witnessed those kids having fun learning English. We even got in on the action by leading teams in a Scattegories competition. It may have been the novelty of having some bules in the class (it's a good bet that we were the first white people these kids had ever seen - seriously), but I'll take it.

After our visit, it was time to get to work. We arrive at our camp site and met the twenty-seven high school students who would be with us over the next three days. These kids came from slightly better schools and had slightly better English. The building didn't have a tin roof (it didn't have windows or doors either, but let's not be choosey beggars), so that looked promising. We spent our first three hours together getting to know the students and their English levels through some fun games. Jonthon learned very early that one of the students was a pretty fantastic beat boxer. And, since Victor was also a closet break dancer, this was bound to happen:

After this random display of awesomeness kicked off the day, the camp counselor in me came out, and we had the kids doing Hokey Pokey challenges, miming, human knots, Simon Says, and the like. There wasn't a lot of sitting. But, there was a lot of English. The most fulfilling part for both us and the kids was their final project. On the first day, we had the kids listen to and analyze Louis Armstrong's Wonderful World (special thanks to Megan and Jolie). We let the kids listen to the song a few times and write down what Louis saw (I see trees of green...red roses, too). Despite the clear generational difference, the kids really got into Louis and were singing along by the third playing. On the second day, they had to write ten things that they saw in Indonesia, present or future, good or bad. On the last day, we asked them to write their own song (Wonderful Indonesia) using the ten items they'd written and a template of the song we created together by figuring out the stanzas and syllables in each line. In the first two stanzas, they wrote the bad things, and Jonthon changed the chorus to "And I think to myself...how can I help this world?" The last two stanzas were all the wonderful things they see. They nailed it.

Those kids held their lyrics like they were the best prize in the world. They wrote an entire song in English. Damn fine songs, too. When it was time to go, there were pictures and tears. It was an experience that none of us will ever forget. I even received this email from Gusti, one of the students, a few days after returning to Jakarta:

hi Jackie...!
I miss you guys...!!
I'm crying right know...this my unforgetable experience!

thank you,,for teaching us english...!

I hope you can give me your facebook name,,so ican add you to be my friend...!
that's will be great..!
bye. :)

And that is why I'm a teacher.