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Goducate’s kindergarten in Batam is formally opened

In July, Goducate started a kindergarten in Batam for a nearby community. The kindergarten, called Sekolah TK Lentera Anak Bangsa (Light of the Children of the Nation Kindergarten School), was formally opened on Saturday by Goducate founder Paul Choo and the village head. Most of the day’s program, however, saw the participation of the kindergarten’s 26 students. The children come from a poor sprawling neighborhood of some 2000 huts with no running water.

Parents, some students, and guests at the opening
in classroom preparing for performance

The kindergarten is housed in a shophouse a short distance from the neighborhood from which most of the children come. There are two classrooms downstairs, one for the 6-7-year-olds, and one for the under-6s, and a long activity room upstairs.

The three-pronged philosophy behind the kindergarten is to staff it with good teachers, to involve the cooperation of the parents in the children’s education, and to put an emphasis of the teaching of English. Goducate hopes that this approach will give the children a good start in their preparation for life in today’s international world.

Item presented by the students
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Goducate starts kindergarten in Batam

In January this year a Goducate friend started an informal English class in Batam, Indonesia. The class was held at the house of another friend, and it taught conversational English to 8-12 year olds.

During the course of these classes, some of the parents suggested that they would like a kindergarten. They belong to a poor community, many of whom came from other parts of Indonesia to seek work in Batam, and are unable to afford to send their children to kindergartens. Hence Goducate agreed to set up a kindergarten that would provide quality but affordable education for their children. The kindergarten was opened in July, and before we knew it, the class was full, and we had to turn away applicants.

A kindergarten class in session
The area in which the kindergarten students live
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Goducate’s “Sing Your English” in Indonesia

Students in Indonesia learn English from their kindergarten years right up to university level, but end up unable to speak fluently because the language is not used outside of the classroom. Batam is an Indonesian island that has become an industrial zone, with many foreign companies operating there, and a reasonable command of English is important for job prospects there. We have been helping children in some schools in Batam with extracurricular English lessons, to give them a chance of competing for jobs at the same level as students from better schools or those who can afford tuition in the language.

We have found that teaching through singing is a promising method. At first, songs were used to break the children’s inhibition, to get them out of their shell, and to set a fun mood for the class. Later, songs became more than just a mood-setter; it was used to convey the lesson and the words to be used for the day. We found that the children learned the English songs very fast even without understanding them at first. They enjoyed singing and could remember all the words of the song better than all lessons taught conventionally. So this gave birth to the plan to develop a curriculum to help Indonesian students learn English through songs and other activities. That is how we began started working on Sing Your English.

Having fun singing English songs
Students working on a writing activity

The lyrics to complement first-level lessons have been written and the music for these 24 songs has been commissioned. Sing Your English should be a complete extra-curricular English program that can be used in any Indonesian school to complement their English program.