Teaching Campus Program in SDN Ngadirenggo 03

Departemen Sastra Inggris

 Lailatul Nurjanah

 6 September 2021

 Learning and Students 

  SDG 4, SDG 17 

Kampus Mengajar is one of the part of Kampus Merdeka program designed by Indonesian’s Minister of Education and Culture, Mr. Nadiem Makarim. This program provides opportunities for college students to become educators in elementary schools in the territory of Indonesia. Not all students have the same opportunity to join this program. Only those who are selected and passed the selection can get this golden opportunity. A total of 15,000 out of 36,000 best students were selected to serve as elementary school teachers in 3T (Terdepan, terpencil, tertinggal) areas in their respective domicile districts. Luckily, I am one of 15,000 students who are selected for this program, and have the opportunity to play the role as teacher in selected elementary schools for the next 3 months.

I am assigned to become an educator at SDN Ngadirenggo 03 along with 5 other students. Coincidentally, most of us came from Universitas Negeri Malang and only one person from Universitas Islam Malang, so the adaptation of team members was easy.  Everything went well and was fine when my team and I found out that SDN Ngadirenggo 03 is located in the same sub-district where we lived. However, everything changed when we went through our first day to go to school. The distance from the center of Wlingi City to SDN Ngadirenggo 03 is quite far, especially for my team and I, all of whom are female. Actually, the time needed to get to the location was only about 35-40 minutes, but what made it feel so far was  that we had to pass through hills and forests to get to school. In addition, 70% of the roads we passed were lonely and full of twists and turns. Only a few percent of the rest was quite busy and full of big trucks carrying tea leaves and wood from the plantations. Sure enough, the school where we were assigned stand in the middle of the Pijiombo tea plantation area at 801 MDPL and far from residential areas.

Since the first time until now, I have been working there for 1 month at SDN Ngadirenggo 03. So far, there have always been unique and interesting things that I have come across from it. On my very first day, I discovered the fact that there are 6 classes run in this school with a total number of 23 students. Meanwhile, there are only 4 teaching staff on duty. This fact immediately summoned a human instinct to serve. The provision that was originally prepared only to help teach suddenly changed to “I have to step in to teach and start a change.” All the limitations that exist made my teammates and I change plans to not only help teach but also build and revive the school so that it can rise from adversity. We put together several programs in the hope of making the school better both while we were there and after we left to leave them.

Some of the programs my teammates and I have designed for schools are as follows. First, the development of libraries and UKS considering that schools do not have libraries and UKS. At our very beginning in developing libraries and UKS, we have experienced obstacles, namely room availability. Then my teammates and I work around it in a way using an existing room for both library and UKS by dividing it using room boundaries. Due to cost constraints, we also could not hire a builder to divide the room. So that there is no other choice but to become a strong woman as a builder in the place of service. We use available tools and equipment to organize the layout of the library and UKS room.

The process of cleaning the room

The process of creating room boundaries

Second, we program the school’s social media development. This aims to show the existence of schools in the outside world. It is based on a phenomena that even typing in the keyword for the name of the school in google, that does not necessarily allow us to find information about SDN Ngadirenggo 03. Maybe we can find some information, but the data that is scattered on the internet are mostly invalid. Currently, the social media we have developed are Youtube and Instagram. In addition to publishing pictures and documentation videos, we also use it as a medium for book donation as a source of literacy for SDN Ngadirenggo 03 students, considering the books they have are still very limited.

The Instagram account of SDN Ngadirenggo 03

Another program that my teammates and I plan for SDN Ngadirenggo 03 is technology adaptation. Previously, the use of technology in the learning process at SDN Ngadirenggo 03 is still very low. This makes students a little technologically illiterate. Therefore, my teammates and I use technology as a means to bring learning to life so that more or less students could also learn the use of technology from this program. The use of technology that we do, for example, uses LCD and projectors in learning, use of gadgets for media browsing, use of laptops, and so on. So far, this program has been running quite successfully considering the enthusiasm of students in learning to use the technologies we introduce. Students also tend to pay more attention to the material when my teammates and I explain using technology demonstrations.

The use of technology in teaching

Of course we run these programs during and after learning activities. We keep to carry out our duties to teach existing subjects. As an English Language Education student, I find a concern that the students do not know English at all even though it is only simple words or sentences such as “good job” and “pay attention”.  

The learning process 

Therefore, every lesson I apply the one day one sentence program for the students I hold (I happen to be holding 4th grade students). In the one day one sentence program, at the beginning of each lesson I provide a new sentence in English to learn. Another unique thing that I found while teaching students at this school was that many students did not memorize and understand Pancasila as dasar negara. This really cuts into my heart as an Indonesian. I found out that there are these little angels in remote parts of this country who have been ‘neglected’ that they do not recognize their own country.