Teachers from Pangandaran, West Java, make brochures about the town's tourism sites on Thursday, as part of a five-day training course. Pangandaran was hit by tsunami in July 2006. (JP/Erwinda Maulia)

Tears rolled down elementary school teacher Herawati Ahmad's wrinkled cheeks as she told the story of her ill-fated young pupils in Aceh after the 2004 tsunami.

Her voice trembled as she shared her experience of loosing hundreds of students all at once. "Out of the school's 285 students, only 15 came back to school a month after the deadly disaster," said the woman.

"At the time, we told the 15 students, if they found their friends at any of the refugee camps, to inform them school had started again," Herawati, 52, recalled.

"I live in a neighborhood unaffected by the tsunami, but my students," she paused, "many of them lost everything."

With their school building destroyed, children have had to study in a makeshift tent for months, Herawati said.

That was before they moved to another school building, which was in better condition.

"Now Alhamdulillah (praises to God), someone is constructing a new building for us. The construction is almost finished and will be officially opened soon," said Herawati, who has been teaching at state elementary school SDN 27 in Banda Aceh for 25 years.

She said around 150 of her students had now returned to school.

Herawati is among 62 teachers from 10 elementary schools in Aceh, Yogyakarta, Pangandaran (West Java) and Balikpapan (East Kalimantan) that took part in a training program organized here last week by French petroleum company Total E&P Indonesie and local non-governmental organization Cahaya Guru Foundation, which specializes in teacher training.

Most of the schools participating in the five-day intensive training were deeply affected by the disaster, and the reconstruction is being funded by Total.

The training focused on classroom management, in which teachers learned how to motivate students and guide them in discovering their identities, to focus on their strengths instead of their flaws, and to handle students who have had a traumatic past.

"We also take the teachers to science, freshwater and insect museums, as well as a nature school in Ciganjur (South Jakarta)," Cahaya Guru Foundation chairperson Henny Supolo said.

Henny said most teachers took part in the training sessions with great enthusiasm, evident in a Thursday session on teaching social sciences.

The teachers were divided into three groups, each with their own classroom and two trainers. Most were actively involved, either by raising questions or delivering responses, taking active roles in group assignments and games, or presenting the results of their projects in front of the classrooms.

Sri Winaryanti, a teacher from Balikpapan, wrote the following in her writing assignment:

Bored...? Sure!!! Tiring...? Must be!!! Those thoughts and words continually buzzed in my ears after receiving a letter from my school's principal, who told me to take part in this training. I have participated in numerous training programs that were always rather boring; they always took a one-way approach. Participants would get tremendously sleepy. But, here....

In the first session on the first day of this training, there's only word that could represent my feelings: WOW!!! Subhanallah (exalted is God)... Allah has answered my prayers to set foot in TMII (Indonesia miniature park in East Jakarta). To be honest, I've never been to the park, which they said was founded by first lady Tien Soeharto.

I've got so many things here, and I can take them back as "souvenirs", as teaching materials for my students....

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