Teaching often gets pictured as one direction only: the teacher talks, the student listens. On day two of training, September 11, 2026, that picture flipped. During the YLAI Balanced Reading Role Play Session, teachers from Kediri District’s Gugus 1 cluster in Tabanan were asked to set their role aside for a moment and sit back down as students.
Held in Kimnara Space’s collaboration room in Cepaka Village, this follow-up session from Yayasan Literasi Anak Indonesia (YLAI) didn’t stop at theory. Teachers took turns practicing how to teach reading directly, while fellow participants played the role of the student being guided.
Why Do Teachers Need to Play the Student?
There’s solid reasoning behind this role play format. Understanding a teaching technique on paper and practicing it in front of someone else are two very different things. A teacher might know the sequence for guiding a child through reading by heart, but the awkwardness only surfaces once that sequence gets tested live, against reactions from the “student” in front of them that don’t always follow the script.
The format also gives teachers experience from both sides at once. Playing the “teacher,” they practice applying the technique. Switching to the “student,” they feel firsthand what it’s like to be guided by a particular approach, including those points where an instruction feels confusing or lands just right.
Stages Practiced During the Role Play
The session didn’t stop at a single scenario. From opening a reading session to the point where a child can read independently, teachers worked through several stages one at a time.
The first stage practiced was opening a reading session. It sounds simple, but how a teacher opens a session sets the tone for everything that follows. There’s a technique to giving clear direction without sounding preachy, something easier to grasp through practice than by reading it off a training module.
Next came the practice of asking questions. Questions in a reading session serve a different purpose than simply checking for a right or wrong answer. Teachers trained to frame questions that push a child to think, rather than questions whose answers are already given away by the teacher’s own tone of voice.
The toughest part usually came when the “student” pretended to struggle with a word or sentence. At this point, teachers practiced offering just enough help, not handing over the answer outright, but giving a hint that kept the child working toward finding it themselves.
The final stage, just as important as the rest, was learning to pull support back slowly. A teacher who holds control too long can end up blocking a child’s path to reading independently. Through this role play, teachers practiced recognizing the right point to step back, giving a child room to finish reading on their own.
Read also: Balanced Reading Training at Kimnara Space by YLAI
One Method, Many Ways to Apply It
A point repeated throughout the session was that every child has a different reading ability, so the way they’re taught can’t be treated the same across the board. A child just learning letters clearly needs a different approach than one who reads fluently but still struggles to grasp what a sentence means.
This is where repeated practice through role play earns its value. Teachers didn’t just learn one ideal scenario. They practiced reading the situation itself and adjusting their response accordingly. That kind of situational judgment is hard to build from theory alone, and it sits at the core of the Balanced Reading approach YLAI brings to the table.
Kimnara Space, a Room That Keeps Changing Roles
This role play session once again highlighted a different side of Kimnara Space, the collaboration room in Cepaka Village that has already shifted function several times, from a relaxed café to a literacy training space. This time, the same room turned into a small stage where teachers took turns playing instructor and student.
Hosting educational activities for children in Bali like this at Kimnara Space also reinforces the room’s place within the ecosystem COCO Social Fund has built in Cepaka Village. Its role now goes beyond a hangout spot. It’s become a venue open to education initiatives from other foundations too.
The results of this role play session won’t show up that same day. The real impact appears once teachers from Kediri District’s Gugus 1 return to their own classrooms. They go back with new material, and more importantly, new habits for guiding children through reading.
For any company or partner weighing a CSR program in Bali, this kind of practice-based training model is worth taking as a reference. Training built around live simulation tends to leave a deeper mark than one-way information delivery, especially for a skill that demands sensitivity to another person’s reaction, like teaching reading.
Closing Thoughts: Teachers Who Go Home With a New Way of Guiding Children
The YLAI Balanced Reading Role Play Session at Kimnara Space shows that effective teacher training doesn’t stop at explaining a concept. There’s real value in giving teachers room to try, get it wrong, and correct their own approach before facing actual students in the classroom.
The hope is simple: once teachers from Kediri District’s Gugus 1 return to teaching, they won’t just carry new material from this training. They’ll carry a new way of guiding each child through reading, matched to that child’s own ability.
