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Apparently, Mr. Mat Ibnu’s English class is a peminatan or a lintas minat subject (an elective or an optional English subject for students) that's why he only has very few teaching loads in a week. It is not that hectic at all.
September 5, 2019: The class started at 8 am. When I first entered the classroom along with my colleagues, it was a warm and a welcoming experience since the students are very thrilled to see student-teachers coming from another country. Mr. Mat Ibnu, our mentor, introduced Walter and me in his Grade 11-IPS 2 class. The students looked interested and curious. However, we weren’t able to introduce ourselves because we consumed a little bit of Ms. Vebriani Dada’s time already. Ms. Vebri (as she was preferred to be called) is an English teacher who is about to get her certification from her lecturer on that day but not in the same class.
As we sat at the back of the classroom, the teacher began doing the preliminary activities in her class: greeting the students, checking the attendance, providing a short review of the previous discussion and settling the students down. It is a basic protocol that teachers needed to do before discussing the lesson. We clearly saw her enthusiasm in a class by speaking so cheerfully and smiling all throughout the period. Then, she provided some learning objectives to the students.
The lesson material on this day was all about the conditionals or the “if-clause.” The teacher delivered the lesson in a teacher-centered way: she provided a lecture through a PowerPoint slide presentation. Afterward, the teacher employed some cooperative learning strategies. She grouped the students and they answered a worksheet together about zero and first conditionals. They also had another activity whereas the teacher passes the ball and whoever catches the ball goes in front and tries to rearrange the form for zero and first conditionals using the pieces of paper that were given to them. In the end, the students were also asked to provide some sample sentences under those types of conditional. The class ended at 9:30 am.
Overall, the students actively participated and they seem to enjoy the activities given by their teacher. The teacher’s personality is admirable because of her positive outlook and charming personality brought the students to focus and to listen to her. Although, it is clearly evident that the medium of instruction is not purely in English. When we interviewed some of the teachers there, they usually use both the English and Indonesian language in the hopes of having the students to understand the lesson better. That is why it’s going to be a great challenge for me to teach them English lessons soon with only very minimal knowledge about the Indonesian language. Nevertheless, nothing beats hard work and perseverance in attaining your classroom goals. I hope that someday the students can learn much from me and I can learn from them as well. That's all. Terima Kasih!
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