I woke up feeling excited and confused, the partner school arranged by UHO will be very much important in my stay and luckily, I was assigned to arguably the best kindergarten school in Kendari.
In my whole stay at Kendari, the receiving school I was assigned to was at Taman Kanak Kanak Kuncup Pertiwi or TK Kuncup Pertiwi which is situated at Jl. Jend. A Yani No.1, Bende, Kadia, Kota Kendari, Sulawesi Tenggara 93111, Indonesia. It is a government school solely for kindergarten pupils who are 4-5 years old. This is a very brief profile of the school. Physically, the school appears to be new due to the infrastructure and the philosophies adopted in the teaching scheme.
TK Kuncup Pertiwi adheres to the K 13 curriculum used in the whole of Indonesia and it also subscribes to progressivism as well as naturalism which is very much evident in the design and decoration of the campus. Aside from that, the kindergarten makes use of the ideology of learning areas as well as multiple intelligences. In this school, pupils are ranging from 4-5 years old and Muslims as well as non-Muslims are enrolled. The curriculum is lengthy and in Bahasa. It is quite similar with what is used for kindergarten here in the Philippines but one noticeable element is how the theme for the month weighs in the weekly lessons. It is more given emphasis in the curriculum in Indonesia rather than in the Philippines which I think should adopt the same idea.
The vision of the school is to produce students growing from an early age with a sense of responsibility, independence, creativity, and noble character so that they are able to be physically and mentally adapted to the world of further education.
For the mission, there are 5 entries which are:
1. Indonesian buddies are community-based pilot PAUD services.
2. Carry out enjoyable learning and recognize natural life and be able to adapt to the surrounding environment.
3. Improve and develop the professionalism of educators.
4. Collaborating with parents of students and institutions related to the world of education.
5. Providing facilities/infrastructure capable of arousing children's enthusiasm in learning.
As for the teaching system, the school is headed by Ibu Tin Lailanurung and under its system there are 25 teachers, 13 of which are government employees and 3 working personnel to help maintain the cleanliness of the school. There are two to three teachers in each room and the campus holds 10 rooms for classrooms, 1 room as its Principal's office, a wide fully-equipped playground, a storage room, and a canteen.
For the academic support system, one thing unique about this school is that pupils transfer rooms everyday given that the 10 rooms represent different learning areas and are desgined accordingly. The first room houses the younger pupils who are 4 years old and they do not transfer rooms. the 9 rooms are as follows: reading and language, theatre, nature, Imtaq 1 (religious practice), Imtaq 2 (religious doctrines), arts, blocks and movie, mathematics, and the big room for large assemblies. The pupils stay in school for 4.5 hours which is from 7:30-12:00 while the teachers stay until 3:00 in the afternoon in preparation for the next day's activities.
Pupils are very much immersed in the activities due to the distinct time schedule in TK Kuncup wherein from 7:30-8:00 they write on their journals to practice writing, at 8:00-9:00 all pupils assemble at the grounds to engage on songs and games prepared by the piket teachers, at 9:00-9:30 the pupils have their snacks inside the classroom, at 9:30-10:00 they have their preliminaries, at 10:00-11:00 they have their so called "core" where the lessons and activities take place and after that the closing time at 11:00-11:30 followed by lunch which concludes at 12 Noon. Things get a little different during Friday for the classes end at 10:30 AM and the pupils either have PE day or worship day.
Walking around the school, one will see that classrooms are appropriately decorated in accordance with the theme of the month and filled with learning materials as well as visual aids carefully done and selected. One eye catching feature is the use of actual materials such as incorporating banana leaves in the activities for reading and language which proves the naturalist sense of the school.
Lastly, given that materials in this school are developmentally and age appropriate, the way of assessment is also conducted that way in which there are no quantified grades but rather anecdotal records of monthly, daily, semestral, and yearly that holds the progress of the pupils backed with the testimony of the teachers and photos to show evidence.
