JAKARTA, INDONESIA — More than 150 school principals, directors, and language educators gathered at the Jakarta Design Center on April 29, 2026, for a joint workshop aimed at solving one of modern education's biggest hurdles: how to turn passive language learners into confident global communicators.
The event, titled "Human-Led, AI-Fed: Reimagining Classroom Dynamics," was collaboratively hosted by CNLBooks, Pearson, and Universitas Katolik Indonesia Atma Jaya. The workshop provided a complete, top-to-bottom strategy for schools, splitting the day into two synchronized sessions that balanced practical classroom teaching with long-term institutional leadership.
The first half of the workshop focused heavily on the frontline of education: the classroom. A distinguished panel of applied linguistics experts from Unika Atma Jaya—including Ferdinan Okki Kurniawan, Ph.D., Dr. Anna Marietta da Silva, Dr. Dhion Maitreya Vidhiasi, and Dr. Engliana—partnered with Pearson Master Trainer Vita Kusumastuti, M.Li., to tackle how teachers deliver everyday instruction.
This session dove deep into the art of corrective feedback. The speakers demonstrated that traditional, grammar-first teaching methods often leave students hesitant to speak. They trained educators on how to move away from rigid, theoretical rules and instead use real-time feedback that encourages active speaking and writing. By shifting this classroom dynamic, teachers can reclaim their role as human mentors who build student confidence, rather than just grading paperwork.
While teachers focused on pedagogical mechanics, the concurrent leadership session was led by Verseveranda Lousia Kaunang, an ELT Specialist and Pearson ELL Consultant. This executive session addressed the strategic decisions that school directors must make to prepare their students for the future. Grounded in Pearson’s research on global workplace trends, the presentation highlighted a significant mismatch between traditional school curricula and the communicative skills modern employers actually look for.
Kaunang showed school leaders that advanced English communication has become a crucial driver for career mobility and leadership opportunities. Furthermore, as automation and generative AI continue to reshape the global job market, the session argued that strong communication is a student's best shield against technological displacement. The workplace of tomorrow heavily favors uniquely human, relationship-based skills such as complex negotiation and cross-cultural collaboration which cannot be replicated by AI.
The workshop successfully brought these two halves together through the introduction of the Pearson GSE (Global Scale of English) Partner School Program. The framework perfectly illustrated the event's overarching theme by showing how data and humanity work together. By utilizing an AI-fed data infrastructure to handle testing and lesson planning, schools can eliminate administrative burnout for their staff. This directly empowers teachers to spend less time on paperwork and more time on human-led mentorship, giving them the freedom to coach quiet, capable students into tomorrow's global leaders.
Learn more about Pearson GSE Partner School: https://www.pearson.com/languages/en-id/campaigns/gse-partner-schools.html
Iin Hermiyanto