When I was maybe 13 years old, I used to love to play the SIMs computer game – you remember the one where you direct the Sim’s life and build them a house, get them a job, etc? Well, I remember how if you didn’t take care of the children, then they would be shipped off to “Military School”… Well, 10 years later, I’ve been shipped off to military school too 🙂

My military school happens to be in Indonesia and it’s not for “bad” kids. In fact, it’s a highly regarded school for those who want to go into the police or the military (or was… supposedly the school was a top notch school five years ago and it’s been on the decline since. But nevermind that now). My Fulbright year is encapsulated by my experiences here at this military school – and it’s high time I gave you a picture of what life here is really like… so, here’s another “Day in the Life” but military school style.

Tuesday:

3:38am – chanting and stomping. Hundreds of students pounding outside my house as they run in a circle and spiritedly sing the school song. This used to make me laugh really hard when I woke up to this every Tuesday and Thursday morning, now I just pray that it rains on Tuesday and Thursday nights so they don’t run and I can sleep peacefully. However, this has led to more 3:45am snapchat videos than I have ever taken in my life. Six months into boarding school life, they definitely still wake me up but I’ve gotten a lot better about falling back asleep through their chanting.

5:45am – chanting again. This time as they line up for breakfast and march into the dining hall. I wake up, and promptly roll over and fall back to sleep.

8:00am – After a (refreshing?) nine hours of sleep (which pathetically never satisfies anymore… I think the heat just kills me here…), it’s time to actually wake up. I don’t have school until 10:30 on Tuesdays so I get to relax a little on Tuesday mornings and check a few things off my to do list – lesson planning, skyping with family, sweeping the previous night’s cockroach carcasses out of my house…

Around 10:15am: I head the short distance through the asrama (dormitory) to the school. I call “selamat siang” to the security guard, “good morning” to the 10^th grade students sweeping outside their classrooms, and wave merrily to the students across the field who are desperately trying to get my attention.

I teach two classes on Tuesdays, both 10th grade. While I haven’t had the privilege of attending any classes of my fellow ETAs I know from their stories that military school makes my children seem like angels. If they aren’t in class by the time I walk in, I can lecture them once and it will never happen again. When I call for quiet, I get quiet. There’s no guitar playing, no side conversations, no disturbances (except for the one time a student had a 2 day old kitten hidden in her desk) – and I’m thankful to military discipline for that.

Unfortunately, military discipline hasn’t quite sunken in to my coteachers. They may or may not be at school when it’s time for class, and while we, as ETAs, aren’t supposed to enter the classroom without our coteachers, we would only have class once a month if I stuck to that rule…

The class periods are not nearly as regimented as I would like for military school. Classes are theoretically 90 minutes long, but who knows when the bell will ring to end class – it could ring 20 minutes into class and there goes your perfectly crafted 90-minute lesson plan… This happened to me twice last week. GRRR.

On this particular Tuesday, I start class, as usual, with a game, because after waking up at 3am my kids are pretty sleepy by 10am. If I can make them get out of their seats or make the game competitive, I know I can wake them up so they’ll be good to go for the rest of my class. Today we’re teaching about recount text and after the game, I pass out handouts with a short story of my own that I thought they would enjoy – titled Bule Falls in the Latrine. Their laughter when they receive their handout is better than any game I could have started the class with.

This game is running dictation – teams can only send one student up front at a time to read the text and then must memorize part of it and go back to their team to write it down.

1:30pm – After classes finish, the students march to the front of the school and line up in their rows, class by class. I walk back to the teachers lounge and usually watch the “announcement ceremony” until it’s finished and then follow the students as they march home. During these ceremonies, there are usually a number of announcements from the teachers and a lot of chanting and saluting. Occasionally however, there are punishments. Today, it is the 10^th grade. The other classes are dismissed, while two or three classes of the 10^th graders remain on the field. They all begin to stack their backpacks on the side and then the boys drop to the ground and start hammering out pushups. The girls go to one side and begin doing squats (in skirts! no thank you). This is military school style punishment. As I walk home behind the other classes, I chuckle, sneak a few pictures, and continue walking home. I have to awkwardly pass right next to the students and I give them a sympathetic smile and receive a cheery wave in return. These kids are awesome.

The afternoon is filled with chores. Students (particularly the 10^th grade) do everything from refilling water gallons to sweeping the dirt. Here at military school we have a very strict hierarchy (much to my dismay), and the 10^th grade students are made to do every menial task – and also live in fear of the 11^th and 12^th grade students. The older students can enforce punishments on the younger ones – they can make them do pushups, squats, run, stand in a corner… What I most dislike, is the deference that the 10^th graders must give the 11^th and 12^th graders. If I have 10^th graders at my house studying with me or preparing for the WORDS competition, and a 11^th grade students comes over, then (despite my protests) the 10^th grade students will automatically leave and let the older students work with me. I find this ridiculous and wish that my house was a neutral zone where anyone felt comfortable working with anyone else inside… but in the six months that I’ve been here… I haven’t managed to break that hierarchy.

5:50pm – Dinnertime is it’s own affair here at SMA 5. At 5:30pm or so, the 10^th grade boys start lining up outside their dormitory. They begin chanting at 5:40 when the 11^th grade boys begin to line up as well. (The 12^th grade can do whatever they want – it’s all about the hierarchy). My front porch looks right at the area where the boys congregate, while the girls’ dormitory is on the other side of my house, but they are doing the same routine. At 5:50pm they begin chanting and marching into the dining hall and I know it’s my cue to come as well. I run back into my kitchen, grab my fork and spoon, and head around the swamp. The boys are marching towards the dining hall and when they get there, they stop, resituate their lines, do some more chanting and do a fancy little military turn. It cracks me up every time. They head down the short hall, with me behind them, and grab a plate from the kitchen with a tiny piece of chicken on it and go back to one of the three dining rooms. One is for the 10^th grade, and the other two are for the 11^th and 12^th grades. I make my way back to RM1 (ruang makan satu = dining room one), scoop some rice onto my plate and join one of the tables of girls. Of course, the room is divided with boys occupying the tables to the right, and girls on the left.

We sit, turn to face the doorway and wait for the student leader to take his or her position. This student steps in front of the doorway and calls, “SIAP. BERDOA.” Ready, pray! And all heads bow in prayer. After about ten seconds, the students calls “BERDOA SELESAI. MAKANAN MULAI.” Prayer finished. Meal begins! The students give a little stomp of their feet and then we altogether call, “SELAMAT MAKAN!” (Happy eating? Not sure how to translate that.) Now, we are allowed to begin eating. But it’s rushed. We shovel food into our mouths in the general quiet (except for my table, where I always break the rules and make my table talk to me ~ teacher privileges) and about seven minutes after we began eating, the student leader makes a quick sweep of the tables and returns to their position. All forks and spoons are set down immediately and our backs are straight and upright in our chairs. The student leader calls “MAKANAN SELESAI. BERDOA MULAI.”  Meal finished. Begin prayer.  and we pray again. After another call from the leader, we all chant, “TERIMA KASIH!” Thank you (shouted to the ibus who cooked the meal sitting in the other room). Table by table, we get up, scoop the remaining food off our plate, stack the plates and cups in a large garbage bin, and wash our own spoons and forks in a bucket of soapy water. The students then march out of the dining hall and reform their lines, and after a few more chants and fancy turns, they march back to the dorm while I saunter home behind them.

9:00pm – Several times a week we have yet another “ceremony.”  Sometimes it is separated by boys and girls, and sometimes the whole school gathers together. Oftentimes, this takes place about 20 yards from my house, and it is an hour’s long chanting, singing, marching, and stomping.(This is literally happening as I write this right now – it’s 9:01 on Sunday evening. Someone just “clanged” the flagpole and all the students are assembling and the chanting has begun again…) Occasionally however, it has happened literally at my doorstep – the dorm leader (a military soldier from the nearby base) lives in the house across from mine – and the students will all congregate between our two houses. This is not my preferred location as it feels like all 350 students are about to storm my house.

10pm – By ten o’clock the asrama is usually quiet. Unless of course, they are practicing for a scout competition and there are then 20 students chanting, singing, and playing instruments 20 yards from my house until midnight. But it’s the constant sound of students… of laughter, of singing, of chanting… that will be some of my strongest memories here. I am with my students 24/7 and while at times, it is exhausting, I wouldn’t want it any other way.