Since I know many teachers are reading this (and other folks interested in and supportive of the lives of teachers), I thought I'd create a short entry this morning outlining my observations and some gathered facts about the teaching conditions here in Indonesia.
To start with, the teachers here are government civil servants (have the uniforms and everything showing that affiliation - yes teachers and students wear uniforms here). They are employed by a regional education department, from what I understand, and are at the mercy of that department for their job placement. They can be shifted to another school or village as numbers and budgets require, and many of the teachers here at SMA 3 have actually taught in other towns and other schools - not by choice, but by assignment and necessity. Just as there is anxiety about being RIFed (layed-off) or transferred in TUSD and in other U.S. districts, there is also fear and stress here. Most teachers, though, stay in one school for a rather long time it seems - at least based on the teachers I've talked with here and the stability I've seen in this first two weeks of school. Changes in placement happen at the start of the school year, I'm told...so having not seen any such changes yet, I think the SMA 3 staff is safe.
Teachers are contractually obligated to teach 24 class sessions a week. Each session is 45 minutes and their schedule corresponds to that of the students (7:30-1:30 Monday-Thursday, 7:30-11:30 Friday, 7:30-12:30 Saturday). The master schedule is a true nightmare here as students take 16 subjects and thus have any one particular subject only 2-3 times a week, at different times each day. So, for example, Zulfah teaches 7 different groups of students and sees most of them for 4 class sessions (3 hours) a week in blocks of 1 and 1/2 hours each. Dessy, a biology teacher, works with 5 groups of students, teaching some 2 period blocks and some singletons. Neither Dessy or Zulfah have classes on Saturday (luck of the draw?), but many teachers do...and some days are super busy (Zulfah teaches 6 of 8 periods on Tuesday), while other days are relatively relaxed in terms of actual classroom hours (Zulfah has only 2 periods of class on Monday). It's VERY different from the U.S. and seems to me, in some ways, to be a more relaxed and nice way to work. Teachers actually only have 18 instructional hours a week under this schedule, if my calculations are correct (45 minutes each, 24 sections). U.S. teachers, at least at CMHS, have about 25 hours of instructional time (5 hours a day x 5 days).
That said, the teachers here have about 40-45 students per class...a much larger student load than in the U.S. And, they have very limited resources to work with (government issued textbooks, little access to other book budgets or materials budgets, very slow and unreliable internet and few computers on campus) and rather difficult weather to contend with...it's very hot and very humid and there is no a/c, so it is rather exhausting just to get through the day. Still, they seem do their best and some do a most excellent and impressive job indeed.
The salary for teachers is 3,000,000 rupiah (about $350) per month, a salary that was just doubled by the government recently. In talking with a private school English teacher two days ago, I learned that most teachers actually teach evening courses (tutoring sessions that students pay for individually or university courses) to supplement their incomes which have not been enough to live on actually. Now, this gentleman said, he expects the situation to improve as the salary is twice as much as before...this is good for the teachers, obviously, who are exhausted and also for the students, who (a couple of different people have told me) sometimes receive sub-par instruction because the teachers are too tired or because they give their real energy and instructional planning and efforts to their private tutoring session classes. In any case, when I think about how much things cost here (a nice dinner out for 3-4 can cost between 100,000-150,000 rupiah; school books and uniforms for one student per year cost about 1,000,000; a becak ride costs on average 15,000-20,000 rupiah - $2...) I can't believe that just last year teachers only made about $150 a month. Recruitment of teachers is difficult, as it is in the U.S., because of the conditions outlined above and thusfar I have only met one student interested in becoming a teacher...and I've met quite a few teachers who did not intend to become teachers, but came to this career by default and necessity. It's a shame.
What is the future of our profession? Teachers are critical to the development of both basic skills and 21st century skills (critical-thinking, technology, collaboration, leadership, problem-solving, etc.)...and yet the profession is not valued, the educational experience is commodified and reduced to the lowest common denominators, to the point of only very little added value in some cases and to the point of actual harm to young people in other cases...
Are we able to effect positive change in the world as teachers when conditions are so poor...and are we even motivated to try to do so? I have met so many wonderful teachers here and in the U.S. and from other nations...but what are we really accomplishing? And what more could we accomplish if it were decided that nothing were more important than the development of each mind, each heart, each individual person in this world?!
