Dyatmika School has a reputation in Bali as the school to choose if you want your children to be bilingual in Indonesian and English. A new Indonesian language literacy program is sure to enhance its reputation even further afield; certainly as far as Australia.

Located near Sanur, Dyatmika is a National Plus school which teaches 50 per cent in Indonesian and 50 per cent in English. While their library is well-stocked with literacy books and phonics programs in English, teachers were struggling to find suitable books in Bahasa Indonesia.

Undaunted, the school decided to create its own program and appointed one of the long-term primary teachers, Ibu Sri Utami, as the literacy coordinator. Now in her fourth year working full-time on the program, Utami proudly showed us last week the Literasi Anak Indonesia collection: 57 titles over 14 levels of reading as well as guides for teachers for each book and workbooks for children.

Each book, from the simplest story with one word on each page, up to the more complex Year 4 readers, is set in an Indonesian context. Ibu Utami has written each book herself and the illustrations are done by a variety of talented Indonesian artists and photographers.

An expanding program

The best part about the program is that Dyatmika School is not keeping their resource to themselves. Quite the opposite. They are hoping to share it as widely as possible to Indonesian and international schools alike. So far, through funds from donors, they have managed to sponsor 20 local primary schools in Bali to use the program through providing the books as well as several days training for the teachers.

A friend and I visited last week precisely to see if the program could be used in a pre-school that our kids attend, and also in the early learning centre attached to the East Bali Cashew factory. Ibu Utami was extremely positive and only said training will need to be scheduled for the teachers/carers there. Here’s hoping I’ll be able to post an update early in the new year about this program in those new schools.

Where are the picture books?

When you think of little children learning to read you think of picture books. This is how children are usually introduced to books in homes in Australia and how they develop a love of books. Primary schools in Australia are full of books and lower-level primary students are read to often. Not so in Indonesia. I am told that picture books in Indonesian schools are non-existent. Instilling a love of books must be so much harder with the bare resources that they have.

Without a culture of shared reading in Indonesian classrooms, Dyatmika teachers realised that the books had to be accompanied by training so they also teach the teachers about how to share a book with the class – stopping to ask the class questions, creating a discussion around the story and so on. Utami even told us some of the teachers they continue to mentor have changed the classrooms from a very traditional set up with all children facing the front, to different ways of groups, even a circle.

 

International use

As well as the sponsored schools and Dyatmika itself, there are a number of international schools in Indonesia which have begun to use the books in classes where Indonesian is taught as a foreign language, including Green School. The next step is to make the books available to schools overseas, and especially Australia.

Unfortunately Utami says the requests to order the books from Indonesian families living overseas can’t be filled yet as they are not yet set up as a publisher.

This year the LAI program was turned into a yayasan (not for profit foundation) which means the program can expand, and more people can be involved.

Wouldn’t it be great if Australian schools could buy the books to use themselves and then the Australian money could fund the printing of books for more Indonesian schools! I’m sure this program will expand but it would be great to have an Australian hand behind it.