During the Easter Holidays Miss Andrea Jones and Ms Robyn Elmi made the journey to Indonesia to formalise a Sister-School Relationship between WCB and SMA Negeri Ciputat 2. This school is located in Tangerang, Banten Province, Java which is about one and half hours drive west of the capital city of Jakarta.
Mr. Herli Salim, the Indonesian school's mediator and an Indonesian citizen who is also a doctoral student at Deakin University, acted as a mediator to help set up the relationship between the two schools. Mr Ibni Affan, a teacher from SMA Negeri 2 Ciputat, Tangerang, coordinated and developed the program in the school.
Miss Andrea Jones and Ms Robyn Elmi were warmly welcomed to the school with an official Welcoming Ceremony which included a traditional gamelan orchestra and dance performance. During their stay, Miss Jones and Ms Elmi ran an English and Art Workshop for the senior students and participated in English, Indonesian, Art and Music classes. The Indonesian students were delighted to be presented with creative, Australian themed bookmarks, as well as letters with gifts that were prepared by students from WCB. Both schools strongly believe that communicating with real people will strongly motivate our respective students to pursue their language studies and they look forward to continuing to build a strong on-going relationship that is beneficial to students and staff at both schools.
In her electronic messages, Ms Robyn Elmi says, “Good news, our school has been awarded a small grant from ‘a certain resource’ to support SMA Negeri 2 Ciputat visit to Weeroona CB this year”. It is true that at the moment, SMA Negeri 2 Ciputat is arranging a visit to Weeroona. At least three people are confirmed to come. Two people are from the school and one from the department of education Tangerang Selatan City.
During their visit, they plan to visit Weeroona College Bendigo to strengthen the educational relationship and also to pay ‘a returned visit’ that two Weeroona teachers made to Ciputat during the last Easter holiday. The delegation plans to have a series of meetingswith the following people: President VILTA, LOTE Co-ordinator with the Department of Education and Early Childhood in Melbourne, as well as, a meeting with the Indonesian Consulate. It is hoped the visit will develop further the mutual relationship and understanding through education between Indonesia and Australia.
Weeroona College is looking forward to the visit of our Indonesian friends and colleagues. The school is working towards providing a suitable program for them and looks forward to extending a warm welcome to these special guests. (compiled by HS and RE).
Bu Robyn, thaks for adding a concluding paragraph expressing Weeroona opinion. Andy ? How are you? You can also put your writing here, please.
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