It was months ago when Paul Bayne, Activity Coordinator from West Island School, Hong Kong (WIS) and two of his students came to North Aceh Regency to examine learning conditions in 3 ExxonMobil Oil Indonesia (EMOI) - sponsored schools. Remote from big cities, the schools at Matangkuli, Tanah Luas and Syamtalira Aron are still conducting teaching-learning activities in traditional fashion—Teachers lectured in front of the class while students passively listened as there really wasn’t any concrete model to discuss or debate.

Though a limited number of laboratory equipment is provided, Science lessons were still mainly delivered through lectures. There weren’t many practical sessions for students to experiment in order to maximize what they learned in class. Often, a lot of the lab equipment was stored behind the cupboard and wasn’t put into good use.

Noticing the little use of laboratory equipment to support hands-on learning, what the WIS representatives saw was simply a need they could match. What about a group of WIS students coming down to these schools to teach and perform lab practical sessions as part of their social activity project?

Hence, the student group visit ensued on 5th – 9th November 2007. “During this one-week social activity project our students taught English and helped in Science class as teachers as a way to hone their leadership skills by leading other students in a different leadership context,” Jane Foxcroft, Principal of West Island International School, Hong Kong, explained.

About 40 – 60 students from each EMOI school participated in the knowledge-sharing sessions. For a week, they learned Optometry through dissecting a cow’s eye; Chemistry through examining acid-base reaction in the laboratory; New English words through lots of gesturing and learning supplements; as well as sports games such as Frisbee, basket ball, volleyball, and etc.

The sharing sessions sparked so much enthusiasm among the students and teachers alike as it challenged the old-school learning method they were accustomed to. “We learn in a very creative way” said Fakhururrazy, a final - year student of SMAN 1 Tanah Luas. “The English class was very engaging as we learn new words by gesturing their meanings. Everyone has to act out each new word,” he added.

Similarly, Yusrizal, a Science teacher, was inspired with the way lessons were brought to life. “The way they teach really captured our students’ interest and engaged everyone into learning,” he said. “The cow’s eye dissection was particularly interesting as it provided a new interesting way for both teachers and students to learn how the eye functions,” he added.

Despite the short visit, the social activity prodded the local schools to reflect on their classroom routine. “As a teacher, I really feel the need to improve our way of teaching to incite students’ enthusiasm to learn. Often, we didn’t emphasize enough on practical sessions, and the learning atmosphere wasn’t fun,” Yusrizal expressed. The schools are now determined to emphasize more on pedagogy skills training and subject content knowledge for their teachers to improve the schools’ teaching-learning activity.

Overall, ‘Mutual benefits’ best conclude the outcome of the project. While the communities in EMOI schools were enriched with an array of new ideas to learn better, WIS students learned much about a different culture, education system and learning settings. “I can see how important religion is in this area and how it affects the way of life here. It was an eye opening experience as we start considering things that we normally didn’t think about in other places, like making sure we’re appropriately dressed, and not causing any offenses,” Naomi Durbin, a student of WIS Hong Kong, said.

There is also a possibility for WIS to establish long-term ties with EMOI schools. So far there are plans to create worksheets to supplement their English textbooks, or to sponsor some outstanding EMOI schools’ students to pursue higher education. “Some of the students are very good in English, and obviously they’ve been working hard, but not so much of opportunity to go elsewhere to pursue higher education. We’ll discuss this further when we get back,” Naomi added.