Bali Righteousness Church

Most of the elementary school here are half-day, two classes during the day, and in the afternoon it's the teachers taking the students out to play, fly kites and play soccer, etc., and on Saturday it's physical education, and Sunday is vacation. The students go to school, I understand there are three kinds, one is a large force into the school, I heard that is the furthest away from home children start, and then all the way to bring all the children, they shouted slogans all the way the pace of neatly follow the lead teacher to go forward, there are parents to drive a motorcycle to take the students to school, or their own motorcycles or bicycles, that's right, they are all very young, they drove their own motorcycles, look at the danger.

The school I was assigned to was kind of an elementary school in the center of town, where I taught fifth grade Chinese with another friend. The school is actually a small courtyard building, with one class per grade for grades one through six. The school's walls are so low that you can see the traffic rushing down the road from where you sit in the classroom.

The school's teaching equipment is relatively simple, except for a computer and printer in the office, there is no extra electronic equipment. Inside the classroom is a whiteboard, not a blackboard, but a whiteboard, but because it has been in use for many years, a lot of handwriting has been "embroidered" on it, and it is difficult to erase. There is no three-foot podium, and when you enter the classroom, you will see four rows of seats, similar to a Chinese classroom, with about 40 students in a class, and a little less in the lower grades, with about 6-8 students seated around a square table, around the perimeter of the table. The students basically wear neat uniforms and black sneakers, and the colors of the uniforms vary from day to day.

Because the Chinese class we gave them was scheduled for the second period, which is 9:30, every time we went over there was recess time, during which they would dance in the tiny courtyard, men and women separately, each led by a teacher, boys dancing after girls. Some run out to buy snacks, some just eat "hand-grabbed rice" (rice in a tinfoil wrapper, a few people sitting together, no spoons, just grabbing the rice with their hands), and some eat small snacks. The kids here are very enthusiastic, they say hello to you as soon as you come in, no shyness. It was our first time there and we were a little nervous.

While we are teaching fifth graders, they are almost all short and small, and in China, they feel like third graders. The first time I saw a child, I felt a strange love in my heart, and I went to touch their heads, but my friend told me that it is not allowed to touch the children here.

The Chinese class is more difficult than the English class. First of all, the children's English is worse than we thought. In fifth grade, the best English speaker in the class can only speak some simple vocabulary, such as beautiful, English, one, two, three and other basic words, as well as the names of some animals. I have seen their English books, but they are quite new and there are very few traces of notes. There is no textbook for the Chinese class. Each classroom is equipped with a local teaching assistant, who is mostly an Indonesian university student and does not know Chinese. The teaching assistant helps us with the translation, which means that when we take a Chinese class, we first have to translate the content into English for the teaching assistant, who then translates it into Bahasa Indonesia on the spot. This really puts a lot of pressure on us. A 2-hour class already takes a lot of time to translate, and every night we have to translate our lesson plans into English.

On the first and second days, we taught a few simple animals: cats, horses, rabbits, fish, birds, etc. In Chinese, we first taught the Chinese language, then the English language, and taught reading a few times, then we played a variety of small games, similar to the you-draw-me-guess game, and let the students come up to compete. They are very active in raising their hands, shouting "Miss, Miss, please" one by one, and they love to come up and perform. Sometimes we find that they raise their hands, but sometimes they don't know how to answer a question, so they just like to raise their hands. We also let the kids get up and draw, and they do really nice drawings of animals, which on our side of the world would be a sketch, but they really do draw the animals realistically, one stroke at a time.

We also taught a song called "Learning to Catcall," which we thought was a little bit more lively and cute, and a little bit easier to learn. They learned it quite fast, that is, the whole tune was all sung as "Little Star". The next few days we taught Chinese numbers and basic greetings. We spent two hours every day playing different games, and when we taught them Chinese numbers, we also asked them to teach us Indonesian, so that they would be more active. Later on, we taught them Chinese "I love you", which was the most serious thing they learned. At their age, they didn't know much about love, sometimes the boys would make a funny face with the girls and say "I love you", and then the whole class would be in an uproar, or a couple of girls would come to us and shyly say the somewhat lame "I love you" when class was over. I love you," he said, "I love you," and it warmed my heart.

The atmosphere in the classroom was very active every day, and most of the time in the two-hour classroom was spent on games and interactions. They would propose to play a game of drumming, and the loser would come up and perform a program. The children who performed were a bit shy at first, for example, singing, not quite daring to open their mouths, but the other students would help sing along, and many of the children knew a few songs and a few dances, most of which were taught in the school. One child kept apologizing to me for not singing a good song, saying sorry, which was quite upsetting, and I told her "dont worry, its okay" many times, as if she was worried that we wouldn't forgive her. In addition, we also played games with them, such as grabbing benches, conversations, whispering, lucky draws, etc. It's still different from a traditional Chinese classroom.

Before class, there is the same greeting as ours, the whole class will stand up, the teacher and the students together say: OM SWASTYASTU and then start the class, the discipline of the class is sometimes good and sometimes poor, the language barrier is a reason, occasionally there will be a break in the film don't know what to say a little embarrassing, because the class speed is always faster than the preparation of the class anticipation, and during the class they go out to the toilet, go out to pour water and so on, the assistant teacher will go out to the toilet, go out to pour water, and so on. During class they go out to use the restroom, go out to pour water, etc., and the teaching assistants agree to this. If it is after class time, there are hardly any people in the classroom, and even less children stay in the classroom to do their homework and read books. At the end of the class, teachers and students would greet each other, and then students would come up one by one and put your hand on their forehead and say thank you, and some of them would ask you to hug them and kiss them. On top of that, they really enjoyed signing autographs and felt like they were not there to be a teacher, but a star. The kids will tear up a piece of paper and ask for your autograph, and they want you to sign it on their hand, and if one isn't enough, sometimes they'll sign two.

On the last day of class, we wrote letters to the 42 children in our class, in Chinese, which they couldn't read, and sent them some good wishes. Some children also sent us some small gifts, small flowers, small letters, etc., and some children sent personally wrapped coconut cake, the most impressive is still that one, the lyrics of the song we taught "Learning to bark at cats" pinyin neatly copied to us, in fact, we did not teach the song, but she neatly wrote it word for word, very touching. They will use their own way, send the most sincere blessings.

In fact, every time I left, I was quite upset, because they would always ask: "When will you come back.", used to say "tomorrow", they would be quite happy, until the last day, the sentence "maybe forever". "maybe forever" but do not dare to say out, have seen their innocent smile, also seen their lost eyes. Every time you leave they will accompany to the school gate until you get on the car, every time you come to school they are far away to give you a wave.

They are very fond of taking pictures and recording videos, and with my cell phone, they can find out the jitterbugs and ask me to record them, although they don't know how to express themselves in English very well, but they can gesture in all kinds of ways. The pair of big, clear eyes are full of infinite curiosity about the outside world.

In just a few days, I've brought them very little. For them, it's probably just a few days of hobby class to learn a few Chinese words, but for me to step on the podium in the future, it's probably a unique memory. I've recorded a lot of videos for them, and if I could set the articles to music, I think I'd choose "Ten Miles in the Spring Breeze".

"Airplanes fly over the city of traffic"

"Thousands of miles away, not leaving"

"Rub all of spring into one early morning "

"Take all the words that can't be stopped and turn them into secrets"

"Shut the door"

......

But hopefully you will have a better education in the future, or at least, something better than what you have now.

And then be able to go out and see the world.

May you always be smart and lovely.