Would you give up a Saturday to attend a seminar for the chance to speak with an American English Teaching Assistant? For the dedicated teachers from SMKs in West Sumatra, the answer was an easy ‘yes’ when asked to give up one of their personal days and make a trek to Padang City. Many of them traveled over 2 hours to participate in a day of learning.

SMK 9 Padang’s ETA, Jessica Bernal, hosted her first session of a three-part series about teaching interactively. There were over 50 participants, all of whom are members of MGMP Guru Bahasa Inggris SMK Sumatera Barat.

The purpose of the seminar was to share engaging and interactive teaching ideas with vocational high school English teachers. At vocational high schools it’s quite difficult to get students engaged in English and even more difficult to maintain that engagement. So, the day’s activities were all about learning new games and practicing them! To put the theory into practice, Jess simulated the classroom activities as the teacher, and the teachers participated as the students—for that day, their usual classroom roles were reversed.

Jess introduced games like ‘Find Someone Who…,’ ‘Telephone,’ and storytelling. She also helped teachers sign up for online learning platforms like Wordwall and Blooket.

It was a fun day filled with sharing ideas, answering questions and making new connections.

Jessical Bernal is currently teaching at SMKN 9 Padang, Sumatra Barat.