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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 –
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the high percentage of passive students in classes
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the cost of materials, and
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the time taken, or allotted, to teach individual components of lessons
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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.
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