“Motivate Them! Give Examples! Be an Example.”
“It doesn’t matter as long as you try. There may be some mistakes but we can work together to have improvement.” This is what my mentor told me after my FIRST EVER individual practice teaching. What was weird is that I did not feel nervous at all, I was very assured by the presence of my mentor evaluating me and the guidance that he has shown me helped me realize what I was doing wrong and to improve on those mistakes.
Today I taught Simple Past Tense to Grade 8 students. For Filipino students in Grade 8 this lesson would be boring because this is already a walk in the park for them. However, here in Indonesia, this lesson would be boring because they do not fully understand the English language. So no matter what, grammar lessons in English are really boring. I started my day with my class in Grade 8A. I started off my lesson very strong but towards the end, I somehow lost the motivation of my students. In my mind, I had a slight panic because my first class was unsuccessful. I was not nervous, but somehow the response of my students felt very different. During the motivation game, “Pop Corn” they had fun and when I showed them a photo of Baturaden, they were able to answer my questions. It was during the discussion part that they were hesitant to participate. They understood the easier part of my discussion but when we had rules like, “change y to I and add –ed” I do not think that they fully get my instruction. They answered my individual quiz but their scores were just average.
After that first class, I went back to the faculty room slightly feeling defeated. The experience was a learning process but I cannot help but feel disappointed at myself. What could I have done to make the lesson better and engaging? The teacher who reminded me of my grandmother asked me how the experience was and I shared to her what I thought. It was very assuring of her to give me some advice like, I did a good job even though I thought it was challenging. My mentor, Pak Darso was very nice as well. He asked me about my experience, what I did wrong and what I did right. He made me realize my mistakes by asking me series of questions, which helped me reflect a lot about the experience. His constructive criticisms were very much appreciated by me and I believe that it helped me during the second class that I taught that day. When he was telling me about them, he would always say “We should motivate them all throughout the lesson. We should give more examples and we should be a good example to our students.”
He gave me time to myself to prepare for 8C; a class that he said was very challenging. I decided to change my style and take into consideration what he said. To give examples after example and for some reason it really did work. I used a visual diagram as I discussed my topic, which helped me organize my thoughts as well as the thoughts of my students. They were very receptive of my discussion. The students at the back, especially the boys, would answer the questions that I asked them. The dilemma that I faced was when I misplaced my small strips of activity paper prepared for them. But I immediately changed it that instead of a seatwork, we had a board work or activity. They had fun and the groups were able to answer which was good. We ran out of time because then had a short break for prayer, but overall it was a better experience.
I saw the difference of the two classes that I have handled and concluded how these learners were audio-visual learners. So I will try my best to give them lessons and materials that would target this. Being a special education teacher helped me see this so I will try my best to cater my lessons to their needs. Hopefully, in the next teaching-learning experience I will have grown from what I wrote in this blog.
