Teaching Practice
After a week of classroom observation, we were asked to do our teaching practice. I was assigned to teach in Grade 8-K because it's one of the few sections where students could understand and communicate in English well. Some of the classes have only few students who could speak and understand English. I taught the anatomy of the human respiratory system, the physiology of respiration, and finally, the transport mechanisms in plants.
Preparation
I started preparing for my final evaluated teaching weeks before the scheduled day. During our first meeting with my cooperating teacher, Bu Maya, she already asked me to choose what topic I want to teach for my evaluation. At first, I chose human transport system (human circulatory system) as the subject matter that I will teach on my evaluation. She also asked me if I need something for my evaluation (e.g. charts, laboratory, in focus, others). I am very delighted that my cooperating teacher guides me in preparing for my lessons.
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A week before my evaluation, I changed my lesson to the transport mechanism of plants because I have thought of an activity that the students might enjoy. I developed my learning implementation plan, and had my cooperating teacher check it. I tried the activities that I included in my lesson plan at home to check if the activities were feasible and time bound.
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I asked Bu Maya if I could use the laboratory for my evaluation, so that the learners would be more comfortable in doing the activities. She asked permission to the head of the laboratory, and the head approved and allowed us to use the laboratory and all the facilities in there. A day before my evaluation, we went and arranged the laboratory. We checked the materials that I will use the next day, arranged the tables, cleaned the room, and others.
Procedure in Teaching
In all my teachings, especially during my final evaluation, I used the discovery approach to present my lessons. I designed my lesson to be student-centered, and it's the students who will discover the information, not me spoon-feeding the information to them.
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Due to the language barrier, I cannon do a full discussion because the learners might not understand the lesson I'm teaching. Science, or IPA, in Indonesia is taught using Bahasa. All the terms they use are translated to Bahasa, that's why the learners were not that familiar to some of the terms that I used when I was teaching.
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Because of this, my dailly lesson was filled with students activities, wherein they will learn the concept of the lesson through the activities that they did. For example, the transport mechanisms of plants, I gave them laboratory works, one was the simulation of water uptake in plants, and the other was the microscopic observation of the transport structure in plants. In this way, they were able to learn how the transport mechanism, specifically water uptake, happen in plants, and they discovered what part of the plant is responsible for the water uptake, and other transport functions.
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The only discussion that I did was them the processing of the data they have collected. I only guided them in interpreting these data, it's their task to deduce the concepts behind the data by the answering the guide questions that was included in their activity.
Time Management and Organizing Activities
I was given 2 hours to teach my lesson during my final evaluated teaching. In these 2 hours, I must be able to execute all the activities that I put in my lesson plan. I am guilty of jam-packing my lesson with many activities. This is because I want my learners to be the main characters inside the classroom, and I am just there acting as a narrator, facilitating the whole learning process, guiding the learners what they should and should not do. 2 hours may seem long, but for a laboratory lesson with a pre-laboratory orientation, laboratory proper, and post laboratory discussion, it's not enough. But I managed to successfully allocate the time to each of the activities in my lesson plan. And when I executed the lesson, I was so happy because the time allocation was successful because all the activities were executed.
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I had 2 main activities for my lesson. The first one is for the learners to simulate water uptake in plant using cabbage and colored water. The second one is for the learners to use the microscope to observe the structure that functions for water uptake in plants. Aside from these 2 main activities, I still had other activities, like my motivational game, my orientation, and then my post-laboratory discussion or the processing of their data. I used the sequence pre-laboratory orientation and preparation, the laboratory period, and last was the post-laboratory discussion. All of these were executed in 2 hours.
Problem-Solving
When I taught in SMPN 11, I did not encounter any major problem in teaching. If I did, I don't want to call it problrms, but I'd rather call it challenges. And the only challenge that I experienced was the language barrier between me and my students. Because it's a challenge, I was able to solve it and eventually overcame that challenge.
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The class where I taught was one of the few classes in SMPN 11 where majority of the students could understand and speak English. But even though they could speak and understand English, they still had a hard time expressing themselves whenever I asked questions to them. Only few could really express themselves in English easily. But even though they are like that, my students are very intelligent and knowledgeable about the thing that I taught them. It's just that they were more familiar with the Bahasa terms used in science because Bahasa is the medium of instruction used in teaching Science in Indonesia.
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The solution to this challenge? Google translate and my cooperating teacher, Bu Maya. In my power point presentations, I included the Bahasa translations of the concepts that I put in there. This means that I made some of my slides bilingual. The other solution was by my cooperating teacher helping me teach, because she translated some of the things that I say, and whenever a student will answer my question in Bahasa, she would translate it to me in English.
Classroom Management
I thought, when I have not yet started teaching or observing, that classroom management will be one of the major challenges that I will encounter in this program. But no, I was wrong. When I was still observing, I noticed that the learners are so disciplined are actively participating in the class. This made me feel relieved. But there was still this little worry inside me that bothered me because I had no idea what would happen if I am the one speaking in front of the class.
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When I first stepped in front of the class as a teacher, I was so delighted. The students were still disciplined and were participating during the class discussion. All the worries that bothered me were gone. I was able to successfully teach and facilitate their learning because also of their behavior. They maintained this attitude until my final evaluated teaching, and the success of my final evaluated teaching would not have been possible if they were not like that.
Overall Impression in Teaching
Before the start of the program, I had so many doubts about teaching in a different country. Because I am not a people person, I am not good in speaking in front of many people. But because of this program, I gained confidence in teaching. Because of this program, I was immersed to the real world of teaching, and to the real application of teaching across boundaries.
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Yes, there were challenges that somehow made my journey rough, but I was able to overcome those challenges. And this made me a better teacher to be. All the learning that I collected during my teaching practice in Indonesia would be one of the scaffolds that would make a good teacher in the near future,
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Teaching is not easy. Teaching would really challenge you. But teaching is fun if you really love and enjoy what you are doing.