Kang GURU Travels
to Sumbawa
by Kevin Dalton
Kevin, Ogi and Ana from KGRE went to Sumbawa in early June to present the first KGRE Blitz to the teachers and
students in the city of Sumbawa Besar. They visted SMA 2, SMP 1 and SMK
1 for mini-workshops and promotional activities. The also conducted several school student meetings, a meeting
with the Bupati for teachers and students, and meetings with local DIKNAS and other local government officials.
They also met with Pak Julmansyah from the Kantor Dinas Kehutanan & Perkebunan in
Sumbawa and talked about conversation, income-generation and the environment AND growing trees for sale legally.
Sunday the 3rd of June started off very well as Ogi, Ana and I met at Ngurah Rai Airport in Denpasar. It was
around 8.30am and we were booking in for the flight to Mataram on route to Sumbawa. KGRE was heading to the
city of Sumbawa Besar for the KGRE Blitz program in that city.
Our Merpati flight was originally due to leave Bali at 9.30am. However it did not leave until almost 2.30pm,
that was almost 6 hours after we arrived at the airport. That was a long delay and a little but frustrating
as we had plans in Sumbawa Besar beginning at 4pm. Merpati Nusantara Airlines was having problems with the plane.
It was delayed and was in fact still in Lombok while we were waiting in Bali. We waited until 2.30 to leave
for the 15 minute flight across the ocean. A friend of ours, Richard from an AusAID project based in Kupang,
had worse luck than us though. He also arrived for an early flight on Merpati to Kupang.
|
Instead of his flight leaving at 9.00am he finally left Ngurah Rai at 8.30pm
– that was a wait of over 12 hours in the airport. That is a long time to sit in an airport especially
when Merpati couldn't really say when the flight was due to leave.
We arrived in Lombok around 3pm and met our driver and car for the trip by road to Sumawa Besar. We arrived
at the hotel at 10.45pm. The ferry was slow and we had to wait for 90 mins at the port in eats Lombok. The
drive from the port in Sumbawa to the city of Sumbawa Besar was very slow – bad road and a slow night-driver!
|
|
On Monday morning Ogi was up bright and early preparing the materials we would need for the presentations and
meetings for that day. The Organizing Committee, headed by Pak
Umar from SMA 2, was there to assist us. Many thanks to Pak Umar and his committee for all of their hard
work over the past few months. This was KGRE's first pro-active promotional Blitz so we are learning many things
along the way, with assistance from people like Pak Umar.
By 8.30 we were in the local DIKNAS office presenting our KGRE Blitz information to officials from that office.
Kepala DIKNAS was not there but Pak Usman looked after us very well. After our visit to DIKNAS we called into
Oisvira FM – a long time friend of KGRE and our radio station in Sumbawa Besar.
We met with the owners, Pak Muis and his wife Ibu Minun. I also met with Dian, a young radio presenter with Oisvira
FM, who hopefully will join, with possibly Pak Umar, to present English Language interactive on Oisvira FM for
KGRE. They then will then be able to become members of the KGRE Interactive English Language Presenter's Network.
In the afternoon Ogi, Ana and I met with a wonderful young man, Pak Julmansyah from the Kantor Dinas Kehutanan & Perkebunan
in Sumbawa.
In conjunction with several important international forestry partnerships, Julmansyah's office has been conducting
forestry research in the Sumbawa. The partnerships are with –
Julmansyah and the Kantor Dinas Kehutanan & Perkebunan in Sumbawa have been helping local growers of teak
wood to increase their income from the crops and to understand the importance of looking after the environment
in which they grow their products. The project has been conducting important training programs with local communities
about the importance of the forest and the environment. Pak Julmansyah went to Australia on a Study Tour last
year to see forests and environmental projects there. He says he learnt a lot but he also says that his Australian
counterparts learnt a lot from him and the other 6 participants in the tour. KGRE will give you more on this
very important topic in the September KGRE magazine – our Environment edition for 2007.
|
On Tuesday it was the first teacher mini-workshop and the location was SMA 2, Pak Umar's school in Sumbawa
Besar. Around 60 teachers attended and it was surprising to find that virtually none of them knew anything
at all about KGRE. They didn't know about the KGRE radio program on local radio so obviously there is a
promotion issue here that needs to be addressed, not only in Sumbawa Besar, but probably in many other locations
around Indonesia.
|
|
|
|
|
The teachers were keen to hear about the services and materials offered by KGRE and were keen to have KGRE return
in September for full teacher workshops. The local teacher association is very active so this will make the
workshops much easier to organize.
Next, students from SMA 2 and several other nearby schools attended the KGRE student meeting. There must have
been 100 students and all of them were very keen on English and NONE of them knew about KGRE. After a brief
LCD presentation, explanations and prize giving, they were keen to become more involved with KGRE. It will be
interesting to see how many requests we get for magazines and other materials KGRE receives from these students.
They were great fun and it was good to hear such good questions from them during the discussions. Well done
SMA students from SMA 2 and surrounding schools.
In the afternoon Ana, Ogi and I visited Visit Uni Hamzanwadi and UNSA to meet students who have a great interest
in the English language. They are studying English as a part of their tertiary courses.
|
On Wednesday morning we went to SMK
1 Sumbawa Besar to meet with a small group of SMK teachers from SMK 1 and other SMK schools in the city.
The meeting was held in the school's very neat and well organized language lab. It was an interesting meeting
with many of the teachers showing concern for the problems they face in teaching English including –
-
the high percentage of passive students in classes
-
the cost of materials, and
-
the time taken, or allotted, to teach individual components of lessons
|
|
|
|
|
After the teacher meeting and mini-workshop, it was time to meet around 100 SMK students eager to practice their
English with us. Ana conducted several games with them and they certainly enjoyed those activities very much.
Ogi helped with organizational matters but also participated in the games too. Students seemed to enjoy the
fact that three of us worked together during the meeting. Of course prizes were as popular as ever and certainly
provided a great incentive to participate in the games. They started off very quiet and passive but by the end
of the 90 minutes, all students were keen to continue with more.
In the late afternoon a Listener's Meeting was organized at Pendopo, the assembly hall attached to the Bupati's
Office. The meeting got under way when the Bupati arrived at 3.30pm. There wre around 50 students there, all
of them keen English language learners. Many of them we had met before at schools and earlier student meetings
BUT they were back again to find out more about KGRE. After the official part of the afternoon, the students
started to ask questions. The questions were terrific and really demonstrated just how good some Sumbawa Besar's
English language students really are. Question were asked by students from primary school age right through
to university students. Questions lasted for well over an hour and it was a pleasure for Ana, Ogi and I to answer
them for the people ‘brave’ enough to ask them. Well done everybody.
The final of the three planned mini-workshops was held at SMP 1 in Sumbawa Besar at 8.00am on Thursday. And guess
what? Almost all of the participants were on time or even early. I was so surprised really as jam karet had
been a problem of sorts on the previous few days. The twenty five participants were keen as they joined in with
all activities presented to them by Ana and myself. It was fun.
Next were probably 75 SMP students, mainly girls, at our final student meeting for this Blitz trip. They were
pretty noisy but all obviously very interested in English. Ana gave them a fun game where they had to stick
the names of body parts on their bodies as the rest of their group thought of new ones to stick on them. They
looked funny and everyone had a great time during this very active and entertaining vocabulary activity. Well
done Ana!
In the evening of the 7th of June, KGRE took representatives from DIKNAS along with Organizing Committee members
out to a special Chinese dinner in Sumbawa Besar. It was a nice finish to a very busy week for KGRE and for
local teachers. A special vote of thanks top Pak Umar and to his committee and KGRE hopes to return to the area
in September 2007 for full KGRE Teacher Workshops.
On Friday morning we headed back to Bali via Lombok. It took a long time to get to Sumbawa Besar so we decided
to leave especially early for the return journey. We left the Hotel Tambora at 5am and arrived back in Denpasar
at 4pm same day.
|
