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KangGURU Travels to Malang, East Java in 2004 Kevin travels to SMP 1 Ngoro near
Mojokerto first before continuing to Madiun, Ponorogo,
Magetan and Malang. The
trip was a combination of Teacher Workshops, KG Connection Club visits,
a visit to AusAID’s Indonesia-Australia
Partnership in Basic Education (IAPBE) and it all concluded
with a Seminar at Universitas Malang celebrating
the 50th Anniversary of the English Department. East Java Travels Sept 27 – Oct 3
I flew to Surabaya and then caught a taxi to Mojokerto to visit the KGCC # 11 – the Junior Club. This very active club is based at SMP 1 Mojokerto. They were Club of the Month in October 2003 and if you read about them you can see that they are a very active club. When I visited them at their school on the 27th of September they were also very active. They began by giving a tour of their school. The school was terrific with beautiful gardens with lawn and flowers and lots of trees. There were colorful murals painted by students on themes such as drugs and smoking. That was good to see. They seem to be very interested in health and healthy environments. They even had special areas where they were growing plants for use in traditional medicines. The staff and the students all support this healthy approach to school and I think it is a great idea. The students were very proud of their school too. Another thing I noticed were the walls of the classrooms – they were covered with posters and more importantly, students’ work.
During my meeting with the club members I saw many things including a dance performance which was quite spectacular. Then the members all sat in small groups enjoying English language games. Games included Snakes and Ladders, vocabulary games and magazine discussions. Joy and Delon from ‘Indonesian Idol’ were the subjects of the discussion in one of the groups. I spoke with all the students and they asked me a lot of great questions too. We finished with some games and KGRE gave away some prizes including t-shirts, pens and keyrings. KGRE also gave the club a cassette set of Series 44 from the radio program.
I stayed at the school for 3 hours and after many, many photographs were taken I headed for the railway station in Mojokerto. I caught the 3.30 Jayabaya Selatan train to Madiun. It was a short trip and by 6pm I was in my hotel in the middle of Madiun. I had a brief meeting with members of the organizing committee for the Teacher Workshop to be held the next d ay at 7.15pm. Then I went looking for one of my favorite Indonesian dishes – nasi rawon. And I found it and I ordered it and I ate it. It was delicious! The Madiun Organizing Committee were prompt picking me up from the hotel at 7.00am. The Teacher Workshop began at 8.00am. We thought we had lost one box of KGRE materials so there were a few frantic calls to Ogi in Bali and back to the hotel. After all that panic we finally found the missing box in the back of the car so all is well that ends well. The workshop went very well although some of the teachers at the workshop spent the whole time talking to each other and not listening to what was going on around them. Nevertheless many of the other teachers participated well and I think they enjoyed it.
Around 70 students from both junior and senior high school levels came in for a chat as well. They were great and quite active with many questions about scholarships, Australia and learning English. After the meeting with the students I went to Ponorogo with members of the Teacher Workshop Organizing. I was feeling quite tired after so many hours of face to face work in Madiun. In Ponorogo I rested in my hotel until around 7pm when I ate dinner – nasi pecel – with the guys who picked me up earlier in the day in Madiun.
It was indeed a hectic and busy day. Over 100 teachers ordered the KGRE Teacher’s Package for example so I played cashier during the lunch break. That was really a hectic 60 minutes. That evening Pak Dwijono from the committee took me to a special performance of REOG. Every malam bulan purnama there is a special performance of this amazing dance/drama at the huge alun alun in the centre of Ponorogo. The costumes and action are amazing but most amazing of all are the huge peacock feathered head dresses worn by some of the participants. The must weigh a ton but the dancers seem to just float around even with a head dress that weighs an awful lot on top of their head and shoulders. The REOG performance lasted about an hour. Then it was back to the hotel for what I call a well-deserved sleep. On Thursday morning I went to visit SMU 3 in Ponorogo and to chat with almost 200 students. They had come from surrounding schools and were keen English language learners. There were lots of questions and the games and activities went well. Students were particularly interested in The Kang Guru Connection Club network and I hope that many of them apply soon for membership of the KGCC for their clubs. Old friends, Arinto and Pak Louis A. Londowero from Magetan picked me up at 10.00am and whisked me off to Magetan to meet the Bupati, Drs. Saleh Mulyono, and the Head of the Education Office there, Drs. Sutokno. We chatted about the possibility of further teacher workshops for teachers in Magetan in 2005. The Bupati is keen to support the workshops and hopefully we can organize them, with the assistance of the MGMP Magetan, before to much longer.
After chatting with Pak Yulianto and his team for 30 minutes or so,
I went to SMK 1 to talk with the very active local SMK Teachers Association.
This association was responsible for the organizing of the KGRE Teacher
Workshop last February. About 300 teachers attended that workshop and
the association is also keen to have KGRE return for further workshop
activities. I outlined some of the possibilities for proposed workshops
in 2005. By working together, and in cooperation with the Bupati’s office
and the local education education department, I am sure the workshops
will go ahead.
In the evening I attended the Seminar Dinner in Malang. Early the following
day I returned to Surabaya with quick stops in Poring to buy ote ote and
near Sidoarjo to buy a new briefcase. I flew back to Bali 12.00pm. |
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