Just Another Day as Key Note Speaker

Let me just preface this post that I have no intention of insulting the culture I am currently living in. I work with very bright and insightful people in Banjarmasin, but you can't live anywhere in the world where it's impossible to laugh at some people and wonder what is really going on in that cranium.

Yesterday I did a presentation 2 hours from here in a town called Pelaihari.  This was organized by our students who are doing a two month long community service program in a lesser developed region that is about 30 minutes away from Pelaihari.  The students worked really hard with a small team of local teachers and principals to put this on including a boxed lunch, door prizes, and of course a special photo shoot with a live American at the end of the event.

My topic was on reflective teaching.  In my presentation I talked about how I've been working with our language department teachers on reflective teaching practices.  I talked about how we hold bi-weekly meetings and how I offer my insights as a peer observer in their classrooms if they wish. I gave insights and a variety of examples for participants to try the reflective process themselves including self journaling and peer evaluations.  I had the usual combination of 100 plus participants including a strongly interactive principal who was a brilliant woman I had the fortune of talking to after the seminar. There were also some outspoken and motivated teachers, a typical group shy ladies looking demure under their sparkly jilbabs, and of course the group of men who pretend they understand you up until you ask them directly to answer a question or to offer their opinions/experiences during the presentation.

It was one of the participants from the latter group that will make me laugh until the cows come home (by the way Pelaihari is famous for raising cows so that idiom happens to fit well with this).  It was now the question and answer time for participants to share insights or ask me to explain something in further detail... or simply ask the standard question "How can I motivate my students?"  Now I'm still not clear on the true meaning of that particular question... sure maybe they want to motivate their students to want to learn English but it is always state so vaguely so I've come to the personal conclusion that the asker wants to hear his or her own voice in the microphone. I come to this conclusion based on the fact when I answer with some ideas that are a bit less generic as the question, I'm usually looking into a glazed-over set of eyes.  But see, now I'm off topic much like my participants get... back to the beef.

A man stood up with one of those Indonesian smiles that could mean anything from, "I'm so happy to get a chance to talk to you.." to "Your batik shirt is on inside out, I can see the seams."  His question went something like this, (of course not without its long introduction and the obligatory "thank you for this time"): "When I see this title 'reflective teaching reflective learning' I thought this is a good idea for your university in the U.S. or to use with University teachers at IAIN but I really don't think we can do this in our teaching at elementary, junior and senior high schools in the region of Pelaihari."

Was he listening to the seminar?  Did he take note of my most simple formula that I repeated like a mantra: 'Being reflective means looking back on what you taught and asking yourself what went well that you want to continue and what didn't that you would like to improve on?'  So my response was simply: "I disagree."  I repeated the mantra and then continued to say that this particular activity of being reflective can be applied to any job you do.  Any field of work can stand to have people self evaluate their work and set goals.  I smiled at him that could have meant anything from "Thank you so much for asking an insightful thought provoking question" to "Your head is full of air, I can hear the whistling from the breeze between your ears."

Thank you for this time....