Community Participation at MTs Seloputro, Blitar

Blitar is one of the districts which has newly joined the USAID MBE program. Blitar is also a district with a high level of commitment to education. At MTs Seloputro, Blitar, for example, the form of community participation has included a collective gift of land for the school. They have already bought 5000m2 of land and built seven classrooms, a room for the school cooperative, a cycle shed and a school entrance gate as a result of community and parents' voluntary efforts.

The school is hoping that with the MBE program it can gradually increase the quality of education through active, creative, joyful and effective learning (PAKEM). In the future community participation is going to focus on improving the quality of teaching and learning.

Rearranging the Classrooms in Pati

The coming of the MBE program was like a breath of fresh air for the school community, especially the teachers and students. The children were encouraged to be happy coming to school and enjoy learning. This is according the head of SDN Kutoharjo 03, Pati, Ibu Sriyanti.

The first action they took was to rearrange the classrooms to make them child-friendly. This included mounting nice displays of children's work which could also serve as a learning resource.

Although it is just an or-dinary primary school, all the stakeholders, princepally the teaching staff, parents and school committee are committed to working hard to make their school a fertile place. This is not an easy task. Everyone's support is needed including the teachers' to make each classroom a fertile place for active, creative, joyful and effective learning to take place.

Caring for the Environment, Starting at School !

One aspect of the MBE program is the more the school knows about it, the more effective it is in improving children's abilities including educating the younger generation to interact with heir environment. This has happened in SDN 2 Sembasuragar, Pati with the formation of a students' movement to care for the environment.

Ibu Sumiyati, the school principal, explained that care for the en-vironment can start at school. In this respect they are implementing an integrated learning program outside the classroom. What this means is that the children have lessons outside class as part of the science, social studies and Bahasa Indonesia programs, They get to observe directly the real conditions in the environment.

In the Pati area, for example, which is generally agricultural, the children are taken to farms to observe natural phenomena and the social environment.This is the speciality of the MBE program at SDN2 Sembasuragar.

As well as gradually introducing PAKEM teaching, they are making a systematic effort to get the children to learn from direct experience about the natural and social environment through the integrated program of caring for the environment.

Teachers Working Group at SMPN1 Banyuwangi

PAKEM has been disseminated throughout SMPN1 Banyuwangi by school-based teachers' working groups. (MGMPS), which are held weekly for each subject. These activities are led by the subject coordinators. As well as disseminating PAKEM they serve as a forum to exhange thoughts, opinions and ideas within the subject teacher group.

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Photo 1. Mathematics teachers discussing the preparation of material which they are going to teach to the children, making plans and evaluating these plans before using them with the children.

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Photo 2. The resulting lessons prepared the MGMPS being taught to the children by one teacher with the other teachers watching.

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Photo 3. The children's work is displayed in class and the best is displayed in the corridor near the school entrance.

The students at SMP1 Banyuwangi enjoy learning Biology, because the lessons are interesting, address issues which are important to them and give them the opportunity to demonstrate their creativity and develop their own ideas. In the student's work on the left the chidren have written about the hormone adrenalin. Since having this kind of lessons the children's scores in the exams have risen significantly.