PETA???

These images came up into my mind at the first time I came to PETA class...




I was thinking, were all of them related to our future as a language teacher? I'm not studying history or geography!, shouted my mind at that time. Ten minutes after the lesson began, I started nodding my head; yes, this is what I need to be an extraordinary teacher. I have to pay attention to this course since I need many knowledge about PETA. Not Pembela Tanah Air or map, but Principle of Effective Teaching and Learning.



From the first meeting, Ms Tika showed us an original song made by Pak Iwan that motivate us to be an awesome teacher who never stop learning. Unfortunately, she didn't want perform that song for us :( . That song became such an eliciting that bring us into the next activity, describing the characteristics of effective teaching. The most interesting part is, we didn't have to look at a long list listed by the experts; we decided by ourselves what the characteristics are. Our previous experience helped us developing the list. By doing this, I can know what are the effective teaching according to my friends. Since our age is not far from Senior High School students, the answers can help me identifying what my students want later on. Some of them are:

• consider students' need
• well-prepared and complete resources
• supporting students' potencies
• focus on the basic objectives

As the course title, this is not just about teaching but also how to assess students effectively. We were introduced to that since the second meeting on October 4, 2010. Ms Tika gave us a brief explanation how to make lesson design by using Backward design. Set the goals of the subject, design some assessments to see the students' understanding, and then elaborate them into learning activities. Since she only told us the technique at a glance, I think it's fair if we still made such a confusing lesson plan. However, from this activity I notice that most of us still do 'twin sins' of design. Sometimes we only focus on designing fun activities and forget about the goals we want to achieve, and vice versa. But when we are too stick into the curriculum demand that we have to finish all of the topic, it can be boring for students. Yes, interesting lesson is not always effective lesson but this is the challenge for us as the next generation of teacher. Can we make a lesson design that cover the topics yet fun at once? It's another role of teacher: we have to be an awesome designer!