Reflection on Teacher Assistance Program

          The most memorable experience for me in this whole Teacher Assistance Program in SMA St. Theresia, during our two weeks school experience, was when my mentor teacher shared her experiences in teaching. She was talking about money, how teaching is worth it for a lot of money. She convinced us that becoming a teacher is pretty good because of what could we get. If we are creative enough to make products, like she showed us her modules for listening comprehension that she arranged by her own, we could get a lot of money. Yes, I agree that we could make money from our creativity. But for the modules that she arranged by her own, that she told me that’s how she gets money, I was just like unbelievable. I was thinking about the copyright issue. I wasn’t investigating too much about it so that I don’t really know about that issue. But I wouldn’t do that if I were her.

           Well, I know that we are as human beings definitely need money to make a living. However, for me myself, I don’t really care about that. No no no, I do care but that’s not the only thing I am searching for in becoming a teacher. If I wanted to become a rich woman, I wouldn’t make myself to become a teacher. I would maybe become a business woman, not a teacher. I just feel comfortable to work with children, that I can see them understand something I told them about. I know what I am doing, and I am sure that’s what I want to do in my life. As when I experienced teaching there like the real teacher, I was satisfied enough. Well, I didn’t really observe the class I wanted to teach because our mentor teacher felt that we might disturb her students for our presence. So, I didn’t get a chance to observe the class. When it was time for me (and Nancy as team teaching) to teach, I was so nervous but it moved easier for me to handle the class as the more time I spent there. Even the time (45 minutes) I spent in teaching felt like moved so fast. It makes me can’t wait to become the real teacher!

Digital Media in English Classroom Learning

       

          In my visit to St. Theresia Senior High School, for the Teaching Assistance program, in these two weeks (week 6 and week 7), I observed an English language teacher in her classroom. Her initial name is MG. She has been teaching there for 14 years. Actually, I had a little time and access to observe her classroom due to several things; I only had 8 days to visit there; and she wouldn’t allow me to observe her class because she thought I would disturb a teaching and learning process with my presence, yet I still took one chance to enter her class when she asked me to do an assignment. I was put at the back of the class, so I would not make any inconvenience to them.

          The school, as I could see, has good facilitation. They have a Language Laboratory that Ms. MG always uses most of the time. This Language Laboratory has one LCD in front of the room and about 40 seats along with the computers. There is also one computer along with the internet access on the teacher seat that could be accessed by Ms. MG anytime. She never even went to a classroom as far as I observed her. She admitted to me that she is focusing more on the listening part, and one student I interviewed agreed to the statement.

Language Laboratory in St. Theresia Senior High School

          She uses podcast for the listening material she gives to the students. She also told me that she often accesses google to find the materials for the lesson. She needs to find a high quality material (mostly a passage), like the present news happening around the world; not only the one she can find on the students’ textbooks. She thinks that her students need to know the news spread out around the globe because the students will face the real world, like colleges, soon after they graduate from high school. It is very good to improve students’ knowledge about the real life. Afterward, she uses a computer to make all the listening materials for her students. She even creates the module for the listening part.

          Therefore, I think Ms. MG has already got in touched with those digital medias. She has already been using them as the purpose of language learning. However, in my opinion, those digital medias are not maximally used by her. She’s not using them effectively. She uses them mostly for listening comprehension.

         If I were to teach there with the same good facilitation and lesson, I wouldn’t take my students to go to the Language Laboratory all the time. I think this lab limits the students space. Every seat has a divider wall that bounds to one and another. This lab lets the students to have a little interaction with their peers. I would, instead, teach in the classroom, and go to lab if necessary. Still, I can use the digital media to teach language. I could introduce facebook as a tool to study, not only for entertaining.

Experiencing The Real Teaching World

Aulia - Grace - Nancy

            My visit in St. Theresia Senior High School, for Teaching Assistance program, was not too bad, it was ok. We had to be ready to start teaching at the classroom for this second week. The thing is we are there for only 3 days, and then we have to be ready to teach. We did not get a chance to observe the classroom that we wanted to teach. Our mentor didn’t allow us to observe her class; because it was the time for the students to take an exam. She said we would disturb the class for our presence. So, we did not have the chance to observe her class but; we were able to observe the other teams’ class. 

As a result, we did not know the situation in the classroom for my mentor. I could only imagine what it was like. Our mentors didn’t really agree on our time allocation for teaching – 2 x 20 minutes. They said it was too short of a time so; they changed it to 1 x 45 minutes so we can learn how to teach more effectively.

Before I got to teach that day, I entered the other team’s class to know what it looked like to teach there. We had the same topic to teach: gerund, infinitive, and participle. We had a deal to make the lesson plan together, but each of team teaching had to pack it their own. I was paired with Nancy for team teaching and packing the lesson plan. We were to teach gerund only because, we thought the topic was too overwhelming. We may not cover all of the topics.

Students in St. Theresia Senior High School

When it was time for Nancy and I to teach, I was really nervous. Nancy remained calm. She helped me calm down because, I was really nervous. We started with introducing ourselves and “breaking the ice”. We distributed a passage for the material. I had 2 students read the passage out loud and then discussed it. We asked them to find the gerund forms on the passage. Then we explained what a gerund is. Finally, we made a quiz but, we made it more fun by turning it into a game. The students were really exciting about it because they could all answer. Not all of them answered it correctly, there were 1 or 2 students that made a few mistakes but, that is just part of the learning process.

In conclusion, I suppose the quiz was an effective way to help me evaluate how the lesson went. With the exam we understand how well they understand the material. The passage wasn’t really effective because we discussed the lesson afterwards such as; the main idea; the characteristic; etc. It would not have been really effective if we’re dealing with grammars. We didn’t want to put it that way. But that’s the request from our mentor.

Am I Happy??????

         Could we measure happiness with the money we have or with hi-tech lifestyle? The answer is No, definitely no. There are a lot of rich countries in the world but their life satisfactory is low. Why is that happened????

        I've made a video, kind of childish i guess but i think it's clearly defined what is happiness to me. Check this out!

          For me, happiness is not all about the money and hi-tech lifestyle. I am happy when I can contribute something to make this earth greener. I plan trees (not in big amounts but enough plantings on my garden). So, I hate seeing people cut trees so easily. Do you know that 22 TREES are needed by ONE SINGLE PERSON to get in the oxygen? I get the data from the Northwest Territories Forest Management (http://forestmanagement.enr.gov.nt.ca/forest_education/amazing_tree_facts.htm in 3rd January 2011 on 6 a.m.). So how could we get more oxygen to live in if others are still cutting the trees?

Measure The Use of Water

vi.sualize.us

          Do you know guys, actually to have the clean water that we spend for taking a bath, drinking, washing clothes, and other things, we have to take it from underneath the ground. It needs to be pumped to our house. And the most important thing that it requires the electricity. I just learned it from my environmental education class that it takes 0,0018 kWh for pumping only 1 liter of water and for every kWh we release 0,98 kg of CO2 (or if you don't trust me you can see and try this carbon calculator in 

www.90x2030.org.za

          Therefore I tried to count how much water I use in a day so that I could be aware of it. This is how I measure the water I use in a day:

1. First thing I measure my bath.

   You know what I use 58 litres of water just for brushing my tooth, facial washing, soap bathing, flushing the toilet, but it doesn't count for the creambathing. I did bathing twice: in the morning and in the afternoon, so those all count twice.

2. For the drinking

   I only drank 2,720 liters. I actually I don't like to drink a lot. Yeah, I know to drink water is good for my health but I just didn't aware of it.

           So, for the entire day I spent almost 60,7 liters of water. That was quite a spending. In other words, I have released 0,108 kg of CO2 (with all the calculating stuff I have told you above). I wonder how much trees I should plant in order to change my CO2 I have released into O2. That's what I didn't get in my class. I just got this question over my head when I wrote this. I should have been probably aware of it.

         I know we spend the water as if the water would always be there, like it won't be exhausted. Actually it's not, well it's not happening yet. But it might be someday. The water could run out if we do not spend it wisely. If we keep on pumping it from the ground, the water could run out. At least if we try to grow or plant trees that will sink in the water to their roots, and to the ground.

Take This Footprint Quiz!

          During my Environmental Education class, I found out an interesting activity. It was this ecological footprint quiz! My teacher told us to go to Computer Laboratory then she asked us to open this link: www.myfootprint.org. This is like what I found out:

           I wasn't really exciting about it at first due to several reasons; first, the internet connection was running very slow made my mood :( turning bad, second, I thought this was wasting time for no use because this looked like a boring stuff to me. However, I found out later that it's really cool :). It could could count how much approximately natural resources I use in my daily activity, from my eating portion, travel distances, household tools spending, until my electricity use. 

           There are about 27 questions on this quiz but those questions don't appear on the same one page. Instead, we can click 'next' on the bottom right page to continue to the next questions.

 

           After 'eating up' all those 27 questions, I could get the result. Well, the result is not bad. It's pretty good :). It means that I still have a good lifestyle not to use too much natural resources in my daily activity.
       

         

          Anyway, from all of this is about, I guess it is really important for you to know how much your lifestyle could spend our natural resources. Once you know then may be you could spend it wisely. You can even reduce it to keep it for later generation. So, now, it is your turn to take this quiz!