Teachers Teach More
Feeling really tired today. I started learning again to be a better teacher, now in SMPN 1 Lembang. I’ve met new students who are very responsive and participative, and also have an opportunity to discuss my teaching performance with a very inspiring English teacher, Ibu Titin. So, instead of writing something new, I just copied my reflective journal as tonight’s post. It is better than no post at all, right?
For the first meeting of my supervision, Ibu Titin told me to be more prepared not only in planning the lesson, but also in preparing teaching tools. Such statement came up because the class didn’t have any marker or chalk, and I didn’t bring either. Fortunately, Ibu Titin always brings her own marker, so I can borrow it from her. For the next meeting, I’ve learned that I should bring my own teaching tools, just in case.
After reminding me about teaching preparation, Ibu Titin also told me how important it is for a teacher to always be a figure for his/her students. It begins with a very common aspect: teachers’ handwriting on the board. According to my supervisor, middle school students learn a lot from what the teacher writes and says. Therefore, when writing vocabulary or expression, teacher needs to write them clear to avoid students’ misunderstanding. I’ll try to do it more carefully in the next meeting because in today’s teaching-learning process, some students are confused with my handwriting because I write the word quickly without thinking that students will have difficulties in reading it.
Besides technical problems that have been explained before, more important thing I’ve learned from my supervisor is the real purpose of teaching. Ibu Titin highlighted, more than once, that teacher’s role is not only limited to transferring knowledge, but more than that; teachers should encourage their students to be a better person with good attitude. It is stated on “Permendikbud”, as Ibu Titin said, that the percentage of teaching-learning process in the curriculum is 40% knowledge and 60% social competences. Several attitudes such as responsibility, caring, discipline and team work should be involved in learning activity. Therefore, teachers need to plan their lesson carefully in order to achieve that purpose with the emphasis on building students’ good character.
Additionally, other things that should be taken into consideration in creating meaningful learning are involving students’ own culture and developing classroom activities in students-centered approach. Involving students’ own culture is important since learning language is usually associated with learning culture. However, Ibu Titin said that although teachers need to consider students’ culture, they still need to keep a professional classroom language.
Moreover, students-centered learning can be implemented in several ways:
(1) Encouraging students to guess the teacher’s question first before the teacher reveal the real answer. It can be helped by providing clues about the correct answer. (2) Asking students with higher achievement to explain the materials to his/her friends in front of the classroom or in groups. (3) When a student asks a question, it is better for teachers to invite other students’ answers instead of providing the answer directly. (4) Involving students as teacher’s assistant in some situations that require students’ participation, such as in a demonstration.
I have learned a lot from this first supervision, but I still have some problems to deal with:
(1) How to grade students’ attitude appropriately? (2) In order to support students-centered learning, how do teachers keep up with students who have different needs and characteristics?
Ibu Titin gave me advice regarding those problems. For the first problem, she suggested that I should keep a scoring table consisting of a list of attitudes that students are expected to have. During the lesson, the teacher just simply put a check on the table whenever students reflect the attitude. Meanwhile, for the second issue, Ibu Titin told me to try harder in understanding each of students’ characteristic, including their strengths and weaknesses, so they can be placed in the classroom activity accordingly. For example, a student whose kinesthetic intelligence is more dominant can be pointed as someone who delivers worksheets to the whole class. By doing so, he will think that his ability is needed in the lesson, thus, his confidence to follow later activities will increase as well.
What have been explained by Ibu Titin is really inspiring. Therefore, I will try to follow her suggestions for our next meeting. And there’s one more thing to be remembered:
“Attitude is more important than knowledge.” --reminded by Ibu Titin