“Meeting the Teachers”
“Why is Monday so far from the weekend but the weekend so close to Monday?” This is what Margie asked me as we were tiredly preparing for school. I shrugged and said, “I do not know.” because I honestly felt tired. Prior to this, I saw a post from my teacher in the Philippines about tips for student teachers, and it motivated me to get up and really do my responsibility as a student teacher.
On this day, we did not get to teach because our mentors edited our lesson plans. We tried to follow the Indonesian format for grade 7 and 8 but somehow there were some mistakes. There were some parts of the lesson plan that was not like the Philippine format and somehow we had some aspects of the Philippine format in our plans. They would usually have about three exercises. One as a whole class, one in groups and another one individually. Their motivation portion also does not have to connect with the lesson because they have another segment in their lesson whose purpose is to motivate the students to ask questions related to the lesson. Lucky for us, our mentors were really kind enough to show us how to do it right and they gave us the time to edit and improve our plans.
During this time, we sat inside the faculty room. Although there was limited space, they still welcomed us and offered us their seats so we would know what it feels like to be inside a faculty room. The rest of the teachers were really very nice. They would try to speak to us in English and offer us some traditional Indonesian food to try. With the help of technology and an application that translates Indonesian to English, we had fun and lively conversations with them. We talked about food, about our time in Baturraden, about UMP and many more. One teacher really reminded me of my grandmother because they act and look the same. My grandmother inspired me to take this profession and having someone who reminds me of her here in Indonesia makes me remember as to why I decided to become a teacher, to make an impact no matter how small it is to the lives of our future.
