SDN Sukadami 02

For the CAS Service program, we were sent to teach English to kids in a small national school called SDN Sukadami 02. For a government owned national school, this was a pretty terrible place to send kids to study. The land was really small, the building is really small and in a pretty rough shape, and the facilities provided were very limited. However, these things seem to not really matter to the students there because they are always happy and positive studying in that school. Also I learned something important too from teaching in this school. I learned that even though they are studying in a school that is not that good, they have the motivation and the spirit to study (That means you shouldn’t complain about school if you go to an expensive school!!).

Another amazing feat that we faced was that my team (which consisted of ONLY 5 PEOPLE) had to teach three classes total! First we taught grade 6 English. However, after the first meeting we were switched to teach Grade 1 English (which ruined all of our lesson plans) because the grade 6 were going to have their national exams and they are too busy to learn English (what a dilemma right?? or not..). Our first class of teaching grade 1 was really frustrating because they are still really active and really-really crazy about everything. They can’t stand still or sit down without making any noise.. *THIS IS DRIVING ME CRAZY!!!* However we survived the first class pretty happy and bonded with the grade 1 students directly. Our second meeting with grade 1 students were crazier. The head of school decided to make us teach Grade 1B. We didn’t know that we would be promoted to TEACH BOTH CLASSES AT THE SAME TIME (maybe its because we are so good huh??), and it ruined our lesson plans again. However after the issues we faced, everything went smooth and we had an amazing time together and we really bonded with each other.


Undertaken new challenges.

I never really taught that I would survive being a teacher (even though my mother is a teacher) especially in a national school. The kids in the school are really-really naughty and not that well behaved. Even to get them to sit down on the chair I had to summon up my team members to help me. I never actually realized too that being a teacher is not that bad (besides the really terrible salary that the average teacher in Indonesia earns) and is actually really fun. Fun?? Why?? Because I had fun talking to the kids, interacting and bonding with them.

Planned and initiated activities.

It was pretty crazy planning the activities and making lesson plans for the students there. We had to create English lessons that are easy for them to grasp and understand but make it appropriate for their level. Also for our lesson plans, we targeted lessons that would teach them essential English terms and language used in daily life (ex: numbers in English, greetings, etc.) so that our lessons would actually be useful for their lives. We made over thirty lesson plans total, and only a couple survived and were used to teach (the others we scrapped because it didn’t really fit their needs.) It was an amazingly hard things we did, but we did it, and that is what is important.

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Considered the ethical implication of my action.

Without this experience, I wouldn’t have realized that being a teacher is actually being like a god that shapes a person. By me being a teacher, I could affect someone’s future and actually shape a part of their life. How? By inspiring them to do some things or by encouraging them when they needed it the most. We also did some fun activities and really bonded with the students where it got to the point to being real friends to the student not like a teacher to student closeness.

Shown perseverance and commitment in this activity.

The worst part of this whole service program was that it was on a Saturday. Therefore, every Saturday I had to wake up every single morning to my alarm at 6:00AM to shower and ready myself to teach the kids. Even though this was taking my holiday and ruining my plans, I actually enjoyed it really well. It was enjoyable enough and the benefits were really good that the positives outweigh the negatives.

Worked collaboratively with others.

I worked collaboratively with others because in the class of about 65 students total (usually we teach about 40 kids because the class is usually divided), a single person cant handle all of the kids at one time. Therefore I had to work together with my group to manage all the kids in the class. It was crazy, but we did it.


Increased my awareness of my own strengths and areas of growth.

I never actually really realized that I am not a bad teacher. I was the person that most of the kids actually remembered the name of (LOL) and that I can actually teach kids English, especially to first graders (with the help of my team ofcourse).


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