Volunteer’s Diary Simon: Round Up

It has been a long time since my last Volunteer Diary so here is a roundup.

Around New Year, I took part in a seminar from my German organisation “World Horizon”, where we evaluated our service and also made plans for the upcoming months. After I returned from Bali, where the workshop took place, I really felt a little bit like coming home. It sounds funny, but I also missed the typical meal rice with instant noodles a little.

I was glad to continue my work in the library and with the kids. It was simply amazing to see the kids again. During my time in Roe I already built relationships to many kids, so I felt really happy to finally enjoy a good time with them again. I suppose they were also glad and happy that I am back.

Motivated, I start my projects with the kids. Our first program was the prosecution of the “Storytelling”. There had been a large delivery of new books before Christmas, so this was a good opportunity to spent time reading the new books. Those books are simply great and the delivery also included longer books.

Normally the kids come for 1-2 hours in the library, you can imagine that it is almost impossible to read a longer book. Due to this issue, we started creating reading sings. Made of thick paper and decorated with pictures and of course the kids names, those signs allow the kids to read the longer books. They can now start reading a longer book, put the reading sign in and can continue when they come again. Therefore we also use a special place, where we store the books, which the kids are reading at the moment. I will try to extend the storytelling program in the next week, since it is a really good program to improve the kids reading skills and the benefit of reading reaches a new level.

Also my work in the school as an English teacher sustained. I thought the kids have already forgot many things but I was positively surprised when I realized that they did not. Actually, it only needed one revision class to bring everyone to the same level and start a new topic next. I tried to create interesting and not to boring revision classes for the kids to ensure that everybody joins not only physically, but mentally.

To give you an image, one of these revision classes contained taking videos of the kids. I just finished the topic “Introduce myself” with the sixth grade, so we took a short video of every child, introducing themselves on English. The kids really love to take videos, since it is really rare for them, and they enjoyed seeing their progress. I believe it is important to show the kids their new skills. I was also really impressed and pride on the kids, talking about their name, village, age, hobbies, religion, school and their birthday. Moreover, it was so much fun and motivated me even more to be a good teacher for them.

To be true, my biggest challenge as an English teacher is the class in the first grade. Some of the kids don’t even speak Bahasa Indonesia, but only Bahasa Manggarai, and they are so wild. Even though, I decided trying to also teach them, which is hard but it is also great to see their enthusiasm and smiles every time I enter the classroom.

I also have a small story for you: Recently we learned about fruits in English, one of those was the pineapple. Since they already knew “apple” I tried to explain it using “apple” and make them add “pine”. Also their reading skills are limited, so one of the kids read “Pak apple” while we were reading out the names together. “Pak apple” means father apple, and it was a big joke and fun for all.

I’m looking forward to my next weeks in Roe and I already know that saying goodbye won’t be easy.

Kampung Roe, February 2015
Simon