This month, ETA Lindsay Smith helped facilitate a teacher’s training workshop with, Yuta Otake. The workshop, which was held on September 2, was called the Communicative Classroom Technique and focused on helping teachers develop more interactive lesson plans. Around 80 teachers from in and around Malang participated in the workshop.

During the welcoming celebration, students from SMK 7 Muhammadiyah demonstrated traditional dances, including a beautiful paired eagle dance and a martial arts activity. Yuta continued the introduction and gave a speech, encouraging all of the participants to get up, move around, and try something new. After that, the participants split up into two groups to continue making lesson plans and learning new interactive teaching techniques with both Lindsay and Yuta.

After an hour, the participants switched rooms and began new lesson plans covering different material. The teachers then reconvened after another hour and discussed what they had learned and what Yuta and Lindsay might want to improve for future workshops. To conclude the day, Yuta and Lindsay collected all the lesson plans and plan to scan them into a Google drive, which they will send to the teachers for future reference.

Lindsay Smith is currently teaching at SMK Muhammadiyah 7 Gondanglegi in Malang, East Java