Workshop with
Marasaraswati University Students
Free time in Bali
Today was a fun day
of meeting and learning with the Indonesian students at Marasaraswati
University. We were able to learn a lot
from Jan’s seminar this morning, and then we were able to connect with many of
the students in smaller groups. My
favorite part of the activity was discussing the religions with the Hindu
students there. They had some wonderful
questions that truly opened my eyes to what the world thinks and believes about
Christianity. We also had the chance to
discuss and plan lessons with the students, which opened my eyes to Indonesian
education and teaching strategies. Some
of the students in my group had some very detailed lesson plans, but they were
not organized at all. When I mentioned
the idea of playing a game with the students, the Indonesians thought this was
a brilliant idea. This shows a lot about
the difference in American education and Indonesian. They called their professor “lecturer”
instead of teacher because the university teachers only lecture to get their
information across. The teacher told
many groups that they did not have good ideas, but did not help the students to
point them in the right direction. The
teacher did not stress organization in lessons, and they must not talk about
proper teaching strategies and methodologies to develop proper second language
acquisition in their classes. Some of
the ideas they wanted to plan for our lesson were very good ideas, just
implemented poorly. By the end of our
hour-long session, we had a very small amount of actual lesson ideas ready, so
teaching tomorrow may be a struggle. We
have to teach for 90 minutes, and we maybe have about 30 minutes of information
available to the students. Everyone was
extremely friendly, though, and I am looking forward to seeing and teaching
with my new friends tomorrow. I have
been thinking of alternate ideas in case the lesson doesn’t go too well, but I
will sit back and let them control the majority of the lesson. It doesn’t sound like organization is a huge
priority in Indonesian education, so I’m sure our lesson tomorrow will go
fine. After the workshop at the University,
we had a relaxing night in Bali. We went
to watch the sunset on the beach, went shopping at some local stores, ate
dinner at Pizza Hut, and swam in the hotel pool before the rain forced us to
exit the water. It was a great day; I’m excited for tomorrow. 
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