Mindful English Class at Sekolah Sungai: Part II

Project Child Indonesia collaboration with Cakap

Salman – Sekolah Sungai Winongo Participant

At around 2pm every Tuesday and Friday, you can find Salman sitting at the village gazebo with his notebook and pen. Being the punctual kid he is, on some days he is the one who calls his friends out to join the class. Since the beginning, Salman has a knack on pronunciation, helping his friends to pronounce English words clearly and correctly. With his handy phone, he takes pictures of the materials that he is interested in. He is most enthusiastic when there are fun activities such as coloring and drawing involved in the session. On some occasions, Salman felt sleepy, yet he still came to class. Even during rainy days, Salman always came first, and was happy and energized! We are highly appreciative of Salman’s consistency to come to class to learn English!

Nathan – Sekolah Sungai Winongo Participant

A shy student at the beginning, Nathan initially needed a bit of encouragement from the facilitators to pronounce new words and to participate actively in class. Overtime, Nathan became more confident and was very enthusiastic during games. Nathan also enjoys learning new materials. His favorite lesson is about colors, that sparked his curiosity, and he even helped his friends to master the new vocabulary he learned! We are truly joyful to see Nathan’s progress in becoming more confident in his English!

Mindful English at Sekolah Sungai Code

Never a dull moment, the children at Code River love to answer questions and feed off of each other’s enthusiasm and energy during class. Facilitated by the teacher Mr. Bas, the students actively answered the questions and quizzes given, and were not afraid to ask the volunteers questions when they did not understand a word or topic. In one class, the students were divided into two groups where the teacher would ask them to guess whether the item they were holding was “in, on, or under.” The two groups showed their competitiveness and in the end got the same score! It was wonderful to see the children show great enthusiasm to learn new materials while also having a lot of fun and joking around!

Overall, the River School children had a lot of fun memories with the Cakap teachers and volunteers. Their enthusiasm was contagious and their curiosity brought the spirit of learning English so much more fun. We are truly grateful for their consistency to attend class no matter the weather, and hard work to master new materials. We are also grateful for the opportunity to learn with Cakap teachers. We hope that there will be more opportunities to collaborate in promoting the English language to be accessible for all children in Indonesia.

This article is part of a 2-part series on Project Child Indonesia and Cakap Collaboration. Read the first part of the article here.