While December brought exams and anticipation for the holidays among the SMAN 1 Tomohon community, ETA Alyssa Guiang laid the foundation for a community engagement project to help students, teachers, and staff practice their English skills!

Fridays at SMAN 1 Tomohon are called “English Fridays,” where students are encouraged to use English throughout the day. To motivate this, Alyssa created large posters to hang up at the school store, known as the Koperasi, to assist the school community in conversing and completing their transactions in English. The posters include translations from Indonesian to English of numbers, names of products, useful phrases, greetings, and other helpful words. The objective of this project is to initiate English use outside of the classroom in a way that reaches both students and faculty beyond Alyssa’s teaching hours.

Alyssa started by identifying the vocabulary and phrases that would be useful for students, teachers, and staff to use when going about their business in the Koperasi. Then, she designed these posters one by one on Canva, a graphic design platform, asking for student input on the poster designs. Afterward, Alyssa converted these designs into PDFs and printed them at a local print shop. She then brought the freshly printed posters to the school and received help attaching them to the walls of the school store.

The day after the posters were put up, Alyssa saw students reciting the information in English, which indicates how this project has started to encourage the use of English. She looks forward to cheering on school members as they practice their English on Fridays next semester!

Alyssa Guiang is currently teaching at SMAN 1 Tomohon, North Sulawesi.