Learning Made Fun

Sebastião is 14 years old and is in grade 5 at Al-Amal School in the Kota-Baru suburb of Baucau district.  Sebastião didn’t used to like going to school, it was boring listening to the endless and monotonous explanations of the teacher and having to copy from the blackboard all the time. 

In 2008 Sebastião’s teacher, Mario Tilman, was invited to attend Children in Crisis’ teacher training. He had been a teacher at the school for five years and recognised the lack of interest from the students.

Mr Tilman told us that he thought at the time“Children in Crisis’ training could be a good opportunity, so that I can discover how to get my students more involved”. At the training he learnt new approaches to teaching. He was always enthusiastic and keen for lessons to be more linked to children’s daily lives. 

Since completing the training Mr Tilman has been teaching his class how geometry is all around us. His students, including Sebastião, love being able to spot shapes in everyday objects, a cube shape on a table, cylindrical shapes in cups, pencils, cans of soft drink.

Sebastião told us how this has helped him: “I studied about geometry last year, but I couldn’t remember the correct name. Now I will always remember because I can see a chair and remember a cube, I can see a can and remember a cylindrical shape. The wardrobe reminds me of a rectangle and so on…”

One of Mr Tilman’s students, Paula, was so happy that the lessons were more realistic. On her way to school she found an empty candy pack on the street and thought “This is a cone! I will show it to my teacher”. Her friend, Severina brought a can into class. 

Mr Tilman also made some three-dimensional objects and brought them into lessons to show how they compared to everyday life. He asked the students to make their own three dimensional shapes, using small seeds and binding them to small sticks.  

Excitement is not often seen in East Timorese classrooms but this is what Children in Crisis’ trainers felt when they visited Mr Tilman’s classroom for post-training observations.

Mr Tilman said: “I am the only teacher from my school to have attended the trainings but I am already sharing everything I have learnt with my colleagues. The school head teacher has given us time to organise a workshop with all the teachers so we can produce teaching materials of our own”