This week was my last week in Indonesia before flying out to Taiwan on the 22nd of July. I was met with more problems that were quite similar to the problems I had last week, which required significant pivoting on my part.

What went well?

I began to develop a more streamlined means of communication with the other volunteers, which allowed us to communicate more efficiently when problems in Taiwan arose. Shifting our focus to phonetics, before branching out to more structured reading comprehension, was helpful with determining the reading level of the students. Though the shift toward phonetics upended my prior plans, it was something we had to do because the students did not have the English reading level necessary to do full reading comprehensions.

What could have been done differently?

When we attempted to do simpler reading comprehension worksheets after phonetics, we found out that students could not understand or make sentences just yet. Because of this, we had to re-evaluate all the worksheets we made, which we developed based on a wrong assumption of the students’ English level. This certainly increased the workload for us, as we had to now develop 4 weeks worth of new lesson plans. Thankfully, the other volunteers took this in stride, and we managed to figure out a game plan moving forwards.

What did I learn about working with others? + What did I learn about leadership?

My biggest takeaway from this week was learning that plans rarely go accordingly, and I need to be more prepared to scrap things that I have carefully planned when they don’t work. I am the type that typically prepares a lot before executing something, but this experience was a good reminder that things typically do not go according to plan, and I should be able to adjust accordingly.

What do I want to develop or focus on next?

Next week, I will be flying into Taiwan, which I am quite anxious about. I am a pretty bad solo traveller, so I’m quite nervous about how things will pan out. Hopefully I will get settled in quickly and be able to meet the students I’ve heard so much about!