ETA Darby Jones is still trying to figure out where the month of September went – it absolutely flew by! One of the highlights of this month for her was leading her Teacher English Club each week. The first week, Darby did a presentation to introduce teachers and staff to Google Drive, a tool they will be using throughout the year for lesson planning and sharing information related to Teacher English Club. The hope is that as teachers become more comfortable with the platform, they will be able to use this free service in their classrooms and personal and professional lives.

The club’s second and third meetings focused on introductions and goal setting for the year. In meeting 2, teachers learned the vocabulary necessary for personal introductions, and meeting 3 put that new knowledge to use. With Darby providing additional goal-related vocabulary and key sentence structures, the teachers at SMA 2 Sangatta Utara were able to each write a brief introduction and explanation of their goals for the year in Teacher English Club. Darby then video recorded each individual teacher reading what they had produced. The idea is that Darby’s club will film similar videos again in May and be able to see how much progress they have made over eight months. As Darby was filming, her heart almost exploded with pride and love for her fellow teachers. Darby also recorded a video of her introduction and goals in Bahasa Indonesia. Everyone is excited to see how they improve!

Darby Jones is currently teaching at SMAN 2 Sangatta Utara, East Kalimantan