Sukanto Tanoto on Teachers and Top Students in Riau

Many top students with extraordinary capabilities and skills come from underprivileged areas, and they do not get much chance to learn under the best condition. SukantoTanoto, Indonesian self-made billionaire, has really high view about education and feels that such condition is unfair. While these students are probably able to come on top position in class, they are probably unable to learn under the best condition with best facilities.

On top of those, these students probably cannot get opportunities to learn with teachers that really understand what they need, and able to explore their best. Through Tanoto Foundation, the billionaire wants to make sure that more potential students can learn under good teachers.

Teaching Teachers to Recognize Students’ Potentials

Good teachers can recognize students’ best potentials and teach to give advantages to top students, so they can feel that their capabilities and potentials are recognized. Even in remote or underprivileged areas, good teachers can help top students to explore their skills and become successful in the future. This can be done by making sure that teachers recognize visual, kinesthetic and auditory aspects in intelligence and then teaching by focusing on these aspects in order to recognize students’ potentials.

Basically, each student has certain lean toward intelligence aspects such as auditory, kinesthetic, visual, or some overlapping combinations. By recognizing those aspects, especially among top students, teachers can engage them in more challenging and rewarding lessons. In Indonesia, the training has been done to teachers in Pelalawan District in Riau, mostly for elementary school teachers (although there are middle school teachers involved), and similar plans are made to spread this beneficial project to other areas.

Teaching Methods to Engage Top Students

Ideally, a teacher should engage his or her students in various teaching methods, to make sure that the lessons cover all intelligence aspects. For example, teachers can apply methods like playing videos or teaching with songs for auditory learning, role playing and experiments for kinesthetic learning, and observation or creative writing for visual learning. Unfortunately, even when knowing these methods, there are still many teachers that cannot do these methods because they are lack of facilities.

This is why, besides training teacher, Tanoto Foundation also provides learning facilities for schools, so teachers can use them to provide potential students with more challenging and engaging learning experiences. Sukanto Tanoto aims to provide as many students as possible with high quality teachers and learning atmosphere, especially to facilitate potential students who need extra challenges and attention for their achievements.