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Teacher Training Projects

2007-2008 Sri Lanka & Aceh, Indonesia

Friday, 8. August 2008By International Baccalaureate

 

It is never easy to pick up the pieces and move on with life again when there is just so much pain. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, trigged by an undersea earthquake measuring 9 in magnitude, was among the deadliest natural disasters in history.

Almost 3 years after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami hit Banda Aceh and Sri Lanka, the grief of families left behind is still tenable as they struggle to pick up their broken lives. Ibu Zunaida, a teacher from Aceh, lost her own daughter to the 2004 tsunami, as well as 43 of her students. In a recent interview, Ibu Zunaida explained that life will never be the same for her again. “I still think of her at night, especially when her 6th birthday had just passed. I really miss her so much.”  

As one of the many efforts to assist tsunami-affected countries and help teachers like Ibu Zunaida and her surviving students to rebuild their lives, the People of Singapore, through the Tidal Waves Asia Fund and the Singapore Red Cross, joined forces with the International Baccalaureate (IB) in order to develop long-term educational training programmes in both Aceh and Sri Lanka.

The goal of the training programmes was to assist teachers in tsunami-affected areas to substantially improve the quality education for school children affected by the disaster by educating teachers in interactive teaching strategies that foster greater student participation. The People of Singapore have played a significant part in this project by providing long-term funding for this important endeavour, without which the project would never have been possible.

The Aceh project, which comprises of a series of 18 two and a half day workshops, focuses on elementary education, while the Sri Lanka project focuses on the area of early childhood care and development (ECCD). In each case, the goal is to train specially selected teachers who can become trainers in their own right, extending the benefits of the training beyond the life of the project.

The workshop trainers are drawn from a pool of experienced and dedicated teachers who volunteer their time and efforts to this project. Currently, there are over 300 teacher-students who have been trained and are sharing their knowledge of the program by taking it back to their own classrooms.

The recipients of the project are aware of the generous donation of the People of Singapore through the Red Cross. The school coordinator for SD 9 in Aceh wrote to the Red Cross to express “Our sincerest thank you to the Singapore Red Cross for the contribution to the Aceh Interactive Teaching Project. I would like to thank the people of Singapore, Singapore Red Cross and the Tidal Waves Asia Fund, all of whom have helped to improve the education in Aceh, especially for the teachers”.

“The Tsunami tragedy and civil war has resulted in Aceh being left behind as compared to other regions in Indonesia, especially in education,” adds Ibu Lelawati, School Coordinator for SD Muhammadiyah No.2. “We feel thankful and lucky that there are others out there who still care about the education in Aceh.”

The TWAF/IB teacher training projects in Banda Aceh and Sri Lanka have greatly improved the standards of teaching and learning in these affected countries, especially in schools that were damaged or destroyed during the Tsunami. The teachers have expressed their belief that the workshops have helped them greatly in their teaching methodologies by making lessons more interactive, fun, and student centred. “Our principal and students love the activities that we do in school now,” says Ibu Lalihafni, one of the school coordinators in the Aceh project. “Students are more creative in class, and have started working in groups now.”  This is echoed in the Sri Lanka project, where Anne Evans, senior advisor to the project comments, “I have watched preschool teachers blossom into competent teachers with pride in their professionalism and are beginning to implement change in their preschools, even in the poorest tsunami affected villages.”

An interesting extended benefit of the project has been the influence of the training on the universities and non-governmental organisations that have cooperated with the project. “Before attending the IB project, we used to think teaching was hard,” says Pak Thamrin, Professor of Physics at Shariah University in Aceh. “But now we see it is actually fun.” Chemistry professor Ibu Fitri adds that, “Even though the training is meant for elementary school teachers, these workshops are really useful for us at the university as we get a lot of ideas on how to teach in a new way”.

In Sri Lanka, the effect of the TWAF/IB programme has been noted by the non-governmental organisation Sarvodaya that works with the project. Mr Ariya Subasingha, a retired Director of Education for the National Institute of Education in Sri Lanka and an advisor to the project with Sarvodaya, mentions that, “several learners who had problems related to parents’ attitudes, handling children with special needs, and other similar problems, have been able to find ways to handle such situations thanks to this training programme. This only became a reality with the magnanimous assistance extended by Singapore Red Cross and the people of Singapore.”

The impact of the project not only affects the locals but also IB staff who visited Banda Aceh last October. “It was a whole new experience for me when I visited Banda Aceh,” says Suryanie Ismail, IB Service Projects Officer. “Previously, I had only seen pictures of the tsunami’s impact on television, and to be able to visit Banda Aceh and see it personally was a life changer. It touched my heart and made me feel thankful that I’m part of the TWAF/IB project.”

As both the Sri Lanka and Aceh projects draw to an end this December, the benefits of the project look certain to continue to affect the students, teachers, and partners who have participated in the TWAF/IB project for many years to come. In this sense, the People of Singapore can be proud of their achievement in helping to sponsor projects such as these—projects that truly help to rebuild tsunami-devastated areas, not purely through physical reconstruction, but also through reconnection to a profession devoted to building futures.