Conference Held to Boost Skills of 70 Indonesian English Teachers and Fulbright ETAs

Thirty-five Indonesian teachers from all across Indonesia and 35 Fulbright English Teaching Assistants (ETA) joined a workshop to improve their teaching skill during an Enrichment Conference held in Jakarta last week.

The conference, which was held on January 19-22, 2015 at the Intiland Tower, South Jakarta, is an annual event crafted by the American Indonesian Exchange Foundation (AMINEF), which manages the prestigious US-funded Fulbright program, to better prepare the ETAs in their job of helping English teachers in various provinces in Indonesia.

However, this year, AMINEF wanted to expand the event’s benefit so that it reached not only the ETAs, but also the teachers with whom they have been teaching in senior high schools throughout Indonesia. Therefore, the Foundation decided to bring the 35 teachers to the capital.

In the conference, both the teachers and the ETAs received training from English-language teaching specialist Itje Chodidjah and from four American teacher-trainers, known as English Language Fellows, or ELF, from the Regional Language Office of the U.S. Embassy, Jakarta.

Yuanitha Febryani, a teacher from vocational high school SMKN 1 in Atambua, East Nusa Tenggara, applauded the training, saying that her region rarely held such an event. The teacher training, she said, would change her teaching style.

“After joining the sessions with Ibu Itje, I am now no longer focused only on teaching grammar to my students. Now, I want to make my students able to have a conversation in English,” said Yuantiha in a phone call with AMINEF recently.

She also said that her sessions with Itje and the ELFs had enriched her knowledge in English teaching, as she learned many valuable lessons that she could now apply in her classes. In addition, she also gained 34 new friends, English teachers from all across Indonesia, with whom she is now in touch, she said.

The ETAs also generally found the event very beneficial for their assignment in Indonesia. The 2014 ETA cohort, who will be in Indonesia until May, learned powerful teaching methodologies and strategies that they could use at each of their schools.

“Samar [one of the ELFs] taught how to reach different levels of students in a single class and introduced the idea of scaffolding, which I have already used this week,” said Elizabeth Silverman, an ETA at Islamic senior high school MAN 1 in Semarang, Central Java.

Most of the ETAs also thought that having their co-teachers in the conference was helpful to break the cultural and communication barriers that sometimes arise between them.  “It was a wonderful idea, and it has since helped me tremendously at school—to better communicate, to set boundaries, and to establish the ‘role’ of the ETA with my school and my co-teachers¬¬¬,” said Blair Southworth, an ETA assigned to senior high school SMA Santu Petrus Pontianak, West Kalimantan.

In addition to the day-long conference sessions, the participants also witnessed an informative “talk show” panel discussion at the Grand Sahid Jaya Hotel in South Jakarta between two former ETAs and two former Fulbright FLTAs, Foreign Language Teaching Assistants, who had taught Indonesian language in America for 10 months.

One evening, U.S. Ambassador Robert Blake hosted a dinner for the ETAs and SMA teachers at his residence in Central Jakarta. “Being able to meet the ambassador during the dinner reception was such a memorable moment for me,” said Haziza, an English teacher from SMA Muhammadiyah 1 in Pontianak.

 

ETAs and their co-teachers posed together after joining a an informal informative dinner at Grand Sahid Jaya Hotel.

Last Updated: Dec 16, 2016 @ 6:35 am
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