Community and Service

Our students are required to do a certain number of hours of community and service each term. This year, the grade 8 students are working with a class of first and second grade students from a local elementary school, Sekolah Binong. I think it has been an amazing opportunity for our students to see how fortunate they are, and how much they can help their country. Sekolah Binong is a Muslim school and is extremely poor. In fact, the actual school building is utilized by three different schools, each one using the building on certain days and at certain times. Each classroom teacher has approximately 40 students! Just thinking about it makes my head spin. The students we work with attend from 1-3 during the week. Our goal is to visit at least 4 times each quarter, but it is difficult since we leave school to make our visits. While there, we typically spend half the time in a gym across the road (that we rent out for them to use) leading the students in some sort of game. Last time we taught them the song, "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes", which was a good opportunity for the kids to learn a little English. And the other half of the time, our students read an English children's book to their buddy and make flash cards with words in English on one side and Bahasa Indonesian on the other. Sadly, I think one of the major things my students take away from these visits is that they are thankful to have air conditioning. We joke around that the Binong visits are a great way to loose some weight! Sweatin' to the oldies.