English Classes

banner photo from our Facebook page

Teaching English will be a certain chunk of our time here and is currently taking up a lot of effort as we decide on which curriculum to use, etc.  It should be easier once we get things rolling, which is starting to happen.

We are teaching twice a week at church, on Wednesday afternoon at 4 p.m. and also Friday night at 7 p.m.  The Friday night class has about 16-18 people and the Wednesday afternoon brings in 8-10 people.  I was driving myself crazy figuring out how to have continuity for folks who skipped Wednesday, and then it dawned on me:  Just teach two different streams.  So the Wednesday people are talking about things they like, and the Friday people are talking about family words.  (I know all the family words in Indonesian because right before Christmas when we were expecting lots of company, I turned our family tree into an Indonesian lesson. )

photo from our Facebook Page

To facilitate the lessons at church, we set up a Facebook page for Medan Branch English Lessons.  We post the handouts so that if  someone misses and wants to get a taste of what we did, or if they lost their handout and want to practice for next week.  We are so grateful to the humanitarian missionaries in Timor Leste who did the hard work of making up the handouts.  (Yes, Timor Leste is a real country, not just a plot line on Madam Secretary.)  Elder Porter plays a huge role in greeting people, helping to read male parts--one week he had to leave for a youth activity and we missed him. When I was in Gainesville, I spent a lot of effort learning upper-level skills in Word and Powerpoint, which has helped me a lot here.  Who knew that a missionary could use those tech skills?


In addition to the lessons at church, once a week we go up to a kampung,or neighborhood, and teach all the kids that want to learn.  Most are between the ages of 8 and 12, with a few younger ones and a few older ones, as well as adults who sit outside and listen.  There were 27 of them the first week, and they sorted themselves into girls and boys--perhaps they do that at school?  Some are so serious, carefully taking notes.  We use our tablets, flashing up pictures as we explain.  This is Colleen with some of the girls.

The next day it just so happened that we visited the same host family on a different matter, and some of the neighborhood kids saw us, thought we would be giving another lesson, and enthusiastically streamed into the house!

Our lessons at church are open to the public, and many of the participants are not members of our faith.  A few weeks ago a pair of middle-school teachers came.  One of them is an English teacher and invited us to speak to her class.  I wish we had a photo of them doing the Gator Chomp, but this is a quick selfie we did snap at the end.  I think that is a rosary on the board, and the name is St. Ignatius so maybe a Catholic school?  They started the class with prayer. We hope to do more of that community outreach.