How music and Despacito unites us all

Some of the most memorable encounters I had with students in Indonesia revolved around music.  I was introducing myself on the first day, trying to explain how I live in South Florida and it is very diverse like Indonesia.  I was telling them that many of my students speak Spanish and English, their families coming from Cuba, Colombia, Puerto Rico….”Ohhhh, Despacito!” they interrupted in unison, seeing a lightbulb go off as they finally understood what I was saying! YES- Despacito! You know Despacito??! Yes! Which led to a young man picking up his guitar and playing it for class while they sang along to the lyrics on their phone, IN SPANISH!! Did I already mention that English is a 4th language for most of them?? Now SPANISH! Are you kidding me??! I could not believe it and I had to stop them to take the video below. Which you can see how overly excited I was...This performance then led to questions about other songs they knew in English (Justin Bieber, Alicia Keys…) plus many confident solo performances that I had to video as well. I was truly amazed how music is so connecting to people, especially when you are half-way around the world and they know all of the words better than you do in your native language.  What was even more beautiful and special was the encore performance of Despacito, in their JAVANESE! I didn’t know the song was even translated into anything other than English, but no fear, they found all of the lyrics on their phones to sing along!

We did a lot of sing alongs that week, with even Anu sharing a special Hindi song from her childhood with them.  I decided to save them my voice and teach them the Cha Cha slide on our last day.  IT WAS A BIG SWEATY HIT! I thought it was a good way to learn some English as well.  I l loved their enthusiasm, especially their giggles when we got to shaking our hips in the cha cha part and “how low can you go”....it was pretty scandalous for this group :)

Anu teaching her childhood Hindi song

The Cha Cha Slide!

I was just happy to get them up and out of their seats! I think they need more of that. This was one disheartening part of all the classes we visited throughout our trip.  All of the students were always sitting at their desks, for the entire day, listening to their teachers lecture.  Umi had them working on personal storybook projects in small groups, which was different than most teachers The only other time I saw students up and moving around in class was for Biology, when the class went into the one lab room in the school.  That was a refreshing experience because the students were excited, engaged, and so focus on the activity,that they really didn’t even notice Anu and I observing.  They were actually doing some of the experiments I do with my Bio classes like looking at onion cells under the microscope and cutting potatoes into cubes and putting them in colored water to observe diffusion. The students had to bring their own supplies though, bringing potatoes, onions, candles, and lighters from home.  They were told to bring lighters?!? In 6th grade no less! That probably would never happen in the U.S. Actually, the candle-water experiment in the video below was really an impressive lesson by a 6th grade science teacher/assistant principal.  He was doing this lab at an elementary school we visited in Jakarta.  He captivated his students (and all of us teachers) when he took his large machete and chopped the students candles in half, down to the right length for their experiment! Even though we couldn’t understand what he was saying, I knew he was funny guy and the students loved and respected him.  It was so nice to see their focus, willingness to follow his directions precisely, and conduct the experiment correctly.

From an American teacher’s viewpoint, we are always encouraged to differentiate our instruction, especially to meet the needs of diverse learners.  So, lecturing every day would strongly be frowned upon and probably why I felt bad for the students. Umi said that there is more of a push now by the Ministry of Education in Indonesia to incorporate more project based learning ideas in their curriculum.  But I didn’t see much of that yet. This brought me to changing my research question from a focus on sustainability to a focus on teacher training and student learning.  My new question, as I mentioned before, is “How are Indonesian teachers preparing globally competent students with 21st century skills?” Well, I still don’t really have an answer for you on that one….but I will elaborate more in my next post.
In closing, I mentioned music as a uniting force between Indonesians and our American group, but what else seemed to connect us? I thought this was a fascinating research question posed by another Fellow, Jennifer Knick, and she shared her question at our post-community stay debriefing.  Our group added our individual responses of what they saw in their host community visits and I thought the commonalities were pretty powerful. Music was definitely on the list, along with food, art, and laughter!  All of them can be seen throughout the posts!