Throughout the week of January 28, ETA Andrew Shifren and his co-teachers decided to structure their lesson around characters. As the 2019 WORDS storytelling competition in Jakarta is fast approaching, this was a way to engage all the students of SMK Stella Maris in storytelling.

At the start of class, the students were divided into five groups. Each group received a few clues about a character, either fictional or real, which they had to guess based on the clues. The characters ranged from Joko Widodo to Tayo the cartoon train. After five minutes, the students wrote their guesses down and then got their next set of clues from their neighboring group.

Students’ competitive spirits shined through, with groups shielding their answers from each other and trying to trick their opponents by loudly saying the wrong ones. Next, students walked around the classroom looking at pictures of different characters and describing them. The class culminated with students creating their own characters. Highlights included a monkey named Mini looking for a boyfriend, a pair of “super shoes” that travels the galaxy creating heroes, and a vegetarian komodo dragon.

Andrew hopes that the fun they had creating characters will push more students to exercise their creativity and join the 2019 WORDS storytelling competition.

Andrew Shifren is currently teaching at SMK Stella Maris Labuan Bajo, East Nusa Tenggara