School to School Program
Sekolah Ciputra April 28th, 2012
In-school School to School Programme (April 28th, 2012)
School to School program is one of the CSR programs (Community Service Responsibility) organized by Sekolah Ciputra Surabaya. On April 28th, 2012, the School to School commitee held a Sekolah Ciputra In-School Workshop School to School program. There were 80 teachers from some islamic schools in Bangil and Pasuruan joining the workshop. There were some teachers from our school to share our knowledge about communicative teaching strategies and building an engaging learning community. They came from various subject expertise; Math, Science, Social Studies, Bahasa Indonesia.
Using ICT to support our instruction- ensure all participants understood the task
It was fun to share our knowledge with the teachers from other schools because they wanted their lesson becomes more effective. I can conclude that every teacher basically wants their class to be well-managed and comunicative- that’s the reason they came to our school. I believe that they are going to apply the strategies they’ve learnt in the workshop to their classroom.
Mother Tounge vs English: An interesting discussion on the use of English for students at school to understand content taught by teachers
During the workshop, there was an interesting debate about the use of English at school for students to understand the content of the subject taught by teachers. Yani, one of the teachers from Al Uswah Islamic school said that her students couldn’t really express their understanding in English (since English must be used in the teaching and learning in her school). Once, one of her students said to her that the classroom is just like a jail where the students must speak English all the time- without giving opportunity to students to use their Bahasa Indonesia.
Tracey Smith, our Coordinating Principal and Samuel Gatut, our Elementary Principal were leading the discussion session.
In response to that, there were some opinions coming up in the discussion; school expectation, mother tounge enforcement, standardized test. What I suggested to Yani was that students must be capable to really express themselves using their mother tounge, no matter what before they learn second other languages. Because in the learning process, meaning comes first before teachers go further to deeper knowledge and content. Students need to know the content language focused in one subject and teachers must make sure that their students don’t get lost in translation- they need to be able to understand the meaning first then go deeper to the higher thinking skills.
Overall, the workshop was running successfully. It was so amazing to see the enthusiasm from the participants. They responded the workshop positively and they kept their mind open for any new strategies and knowledge. That’s because they came to the workshop for getting new knowledge and skills to be applied in their classroom. It was so happy to share our knowledge as well as learn something from them, too.
Download the planner here SchooltoSchoolWritingWorkshopApril28th2012[1]
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