Lost in thought

Dear Diary

Many things have happened during the past weeks which certainly have had an impact on my life.

Since I haven't written for several weeks (dare I say months? ) all chronological order is lost. Though this doesn't really matter as long as I write it down really.

So today I will tell about my rise and fall at a local Christian school here. So when I just arrived in Indonesia I was volunteered to help out at St Fransiskus Lawang as their current English teacher suddenly left.

While I don't have any formal experience teaching, I figured it would be a good experience and in hindsight it was indeed an interesting one.

Many months of miscommunication, wrong materials and general confusion later I finally started teaching. Previously I assisted them when they planned a school trip to Jawa Timur park as discussed in a previous entry. I got tagged as Mr. Bean as I wasn't able to walk normally then, and my overall posture wasn't correct so with that stigma I was off to a rough start. Mum being an experienced  professional advised me to use "Johnny" (a white monkey handpuppet) as an icebreaker. While the monkey was a raving success I faced several obstacles.

As I am not fluent in Javanese or Indonesian and the kids didn't speak a lot of english the communication between me in them was quite difficult. Not to mention the fact I had only 30 minutes per class and lacking the ability to command authority (no experience) caused me to have problems keeping classes under control without the help of the regular teacher.

Every monday I had to teach for classes two upper and two lower. At first I was told that I was able to choose my own materials, only to be told later that I had to use the materials that were 'handed' to me. I was not provided with my own copy so I was forced to just borrow the learning materials from absent children so at times it was difficult to really decide what to do.

I did learn one thing that kids get bored very easily as long as they are busy its fine, but as soon as they are done they are going to cause a ruckus. However, one class was smarter than the other one so while one class took up 30 minutes one exercise the other one breezed through it, causing me to either improvise a bit (which I suck at) or just let them wait the remaining minutes. One of the kids  named Lili was constantly crying when she saw me, although she seemed to be just a real crybaby towards everybody.

As Nadya goes to the same school, every monday I took her to school and had to witness the entire Panca Silak over and over again . Don't get me started on the punishment on not praying,  from being boxed to Japan (which sounds kinda awesome btw) to being smashed by meteorite if you didn't pray properly.

That aside the final day of the month, one of the teachers who was pregnant fell down and couldn't teach. So I was left alone in front of class full of children without assistance. Initially I thought about teaching about hands and let them draw and keep them busy. I didn't prepapre myself properly as I really didn't want to invest any of my own money getting materials for this school. So while the clock was ticking away my precious seconds I found out there was no real good paper to draw over. Even more problems occurred when some kids had a fight and arguments that had to be settled.

I was never told how to best handle these kind of things, it was really an argh moment. So then our dearest Sister Paskalia was kind enough test me that day, whether I could handle a class totally on my own. So the end of the story is, I was called to her office and she basically without any warning or tips on improvement fired me. I felt rather relieved that I could just leave it all behind though I am kinda sad since I was feeling it was going ok. Never even had the chance to say goodbye to the children, a well. I went outside to my mother and said "Mom guess what??? I got fired!!!!!!!" I won't lose a minute sleep over this. 

On a serious note though, for a school that preaches morality they rather lack it themselves. A well screw that blue penguin!

Soon I'll write another piece