Train People to Sustain, Can We?

Recent data from National Geographic (Jan 2011), the population of people around the world will reach 7 billion (!) by the end of this year, and this fantastic number will still be increase along the year. Almost every nation face problem due to this explosion. Some of them can overcome the problems and attain the happiness for the citizens, either from economy, health, or the other aspects. Meanwhile, the other parts of the world can't do it--most countries in Africa and a little part of Asia.

What will happen then?

It's not exaggerated: WAR! Yes, hunger and poverty occurred in underdeveloped countries
at one time may happened in developing, or even developed countries if they can't preserve the nature. The supply of food will not be sufficient for 7, 8, 0r 10 billions people in years later. Eventually, those countries will fight for food, and BOOM! war happened.

What can Environmental Education (EE) do to solve the problem?

In my opinion, EE can not only solve, but also avoid that. When we learn about EE, we must learn also about ESD (Education for Sustainable Development). ESD can't be separated with EE since they are interrelated. EE is a part of ESD while the concept of ESD itself, actually developed from environmental issues as (partially) mentioned above. Bizarre things happened on our nature since the recent decades made some experts thought, there must be something wrong with our earth. After examined the problems faced by the world, they compose the concept of ESD, which cover many aspects. Climate change, human right, gender balance, racial issues, health, and economy are just some of the aspects of ESD. The great thing is, all of them can be covered through one key: education for all.

Why must be education? We know that education is the most important key in changing the world. Through education, we can change people thinking way and their behavior into a better ones. However, the application of ESD in school doesn't mean teachers should change all of the syllabus and materials. They need to infuse the concepts of ESD and its aspects to the material, in order to prepare students to face the real problems around them, and create a sustainable future.

The good news is teachers and educators in Indonesia begin to give more care on the application ESD in school. One of the applications is Adiwiyata program, which has goal to make school as a good place to start a change in gaining awareness to save our earth sustainably. Schools that want to be an Adiwiyata school have to fulfill some requirements, such as the development of school policy that give attention in environment and culture issues, the development of environment-based curriculum, and the maintenance of supporting elements in school.

However, not all teachers know the essence of ESD that they just think about environmental education--whereas actually, it's just a little part of ESD huge coverage. Even there are still some schools that think Adiwiyata program is just a certificate, without caring about the sustainable development. Again, it's one of our job as the next generation of teacher to continue the struggle, to train and educate people to build a sustainable future. Can we do it? Of course, if we believe that we can and invest some efforts to realize it. I think, learning deeper about Environmental Education is one of the best investment. ^^d

Language Learning Should be Flexible

I believe that language is so flexible, that the way we learn it can be done as flexible as well. I found the proof of my belief after doing microteaching simulation in LTM class with my group and looking at other groups’ performance. When we teach writing, for example, we can also put some activities supporting speaking, or even listening skills. I use the example from my own group performance. At the beginning, we do a storytelling—which is a typical speaking activity—as an elicitation. Later on, after having “our students” listen to the story, we can easily help them to identify the stages of the story—which is a narrative story—such as what happened at the beginning, when the problem raised and solved, etc. yes, I prefer this way to tell them directly the generic structure and the language features. I think, by doing this, students are encouraged to think and find the pattern by themselves. It hoped that the concept will remain longer in their mind.

I also believe that the best method in teaching writing is by using “process approach” since I’ve found many facts say that everything instant will not give a good impact. So does writing. By steps I learnt from last Bahasa Indonesia class (which are shown interestingly below), I hope students will have more will to write well.

By these steps also, I want they know that ideas for a story can come from everywhere, even from a story that is seen from different perspective. Here, I want to tell them that language learning should be fun. We can be anyone when we write, right? Moreover, if we give them opportunities to read the story and act it out. I think, these steps can gain their intrinsic motivation and confidence, so they will dare to take risks in writing, as the principles proposed by Brown (2007).

Well, even though all performance of each group seemed good, there are some weaknesses I found repeatedly done. Some of us just put some interesting activities without considering the relation with the material they deliver. It could be nice for students yet confusing; they may asked, “What are these games for?” Actually, I don’t bother what kind of game they used as long as it was related to the subject and they tell students the connection or the objective of the game.

Another weakness is misusing of a certain term improperly. For instance, one of the groups taught speaking but they tended to emphasize the generic structure of a text. Although I believe that language learning should be flexible, I don’t see any sense on that. Maybe they could mention it at a glance, but they don’t need to elaborate on each step since it’s more suitable to be done in writing class. Regardless all those weaknesses, I’m really proud with my lecturers and my friends who can deliver a material in a fun yet understandable way. I wonder how happy their students will be having them as the teacher. J

Please Regard Them as Human, not Robots!

Every teacher must agree that assessing student is a must but not all of them know what must be assessed and how they should assess. As we have seen and experienced during primary and secondary school, teachers mostly focuses merely on the final result, without considering the process students do to get it. In many cases, the result only shows students’ cognitive ability—which is the little piece of their ability. Meanwhile the bigger parts of their understanding are shown in the learning process, and it ‘s seldom assessed until it buried under the surface . Just like an iceberg.

In my opinion, if a teacher just concern on this kind of treatment, then s/he cannot see the students as a human. Students are seen as robots, who are just given some orders to be finished and then s/he will recognized them by looking at the result. If they can’t do the test successfully, then they will not be regarded as a good robot. –( This is happened in our country—I bet you realized it—especially in the national examination)—

Whereas actually, if the teachers have a will to dive deeper in to The Ocean of Students Soul, they will see a lot of hidden potencies that are buried because they never give attention to. There are many aspects to be assessed since students are diverse human, so not of them can be treated as the same. I remember a story about a teacher who used to assess her students simply using worksheet, and when there is a student who can’t answer it, she evaluated her teaching way. When she changed the model of assessment, the miracle happened; the students who are weak in answering the sheet can show better performance in another task, e.g. exhibition or presentation.

Well, if we want to regard students as whole human, we shouldn’t use Iceberg model to assess them, yet a house-building process—borrowing Yosea’s term. We shouldn’t use summative assessment only, but also formative and diagnostic ones.

The proper application of those assessments can be analogized as the process of building a house. The diagnostic assessment is used at the beginning of the learning period so that teacher can use the result to determine the appropriate treatment for students—a strong foundation. The following process is also important, how to construct and combine all elements needed to build the house. Teacher should give a lot attention in this stage because students often show their real understanding here through their cognitive, affective, and psychomotor ability. And by seeing the result of formative assessments, teacher can give them feedback which parts of the lesson still need improvement. Finally, to finish the process, we put roof on the top of the building. This is the time when summative assessment needed; to cover what students have learnt during a period of lesson.

If we use this analogy, we can see that when we build a house, the proportion of each part is not same. The height of the wall is not same with the roof. That’s why a teacher should share a fair proportion among those kinds of assessment. Just like in SSE, we are assessed by using many variation of assessment, and the final exam is not the only decision. I feel be regarded as a whole human, with all characteristics, uniqueness, and talents. How lucky I am...

It's Time to Re-reflect...

Guys, do you feel sometimes Time runs so fast, even flies? As you see on the side-bar of my blog, the Hand of Time moves every single second, and it will hit back anyone who moves slower than it. Even sometimes its longer Hand will slap on your face if you waste it to do useless things.

Of course that's just a metaphore, but let's ask ourselves and answer honestly: have we learned a lot so far--at least for this half-semester term--either from lectures, routines, or any activities in our life?

To be honest, it's such a difficult question for me. Sometimes, I just run my schedule without taking any lesson from that. Maybe I learn something, but I just not realize it.

Living in the world without realizing its essence is like visiting a big library without touching its books
The Secret Teachings of All Ages_Dan Brown

That sentence inspires me to re-reflect on my life. Yes, reflection helps me so much in answering the question above. This blog is one of the tools, besides notes on my room wall I made at the beginning of the semester.

2 months ago, I listed all assignments I have to do in the 3rd semester. Once finishing one assignment, I will cross it out, and up to now I have crossed some of them.

Those notes are not just a reflection tool, but also a planner and a reminder. By looking at it, I can know what should I do at the moment, or what I can postpone, or what I can explore before it's explained by the lecturers.

Now, after 2 months, I admit that sometimes, I postpone what I should do at the scheduled time and it makes me doing the assignments in hurry limit to the deadline. I'm not satisfied enough with the results, honestly.

Friends, I need your help to pump up my spirit. I need your motivation to cheer my life up, because those motivational sticker doesn't really work...

Moving Classes (that) Don’t Really Move

SMA **, the school where I did teaching assistance has applied moving class system. To me, moving class is a big movement in Indonesian learning system. Unfortunately, this school hasn’t (really) moved, which means move from traditional learning method into ICT-based method, especially in language learning. Actually, the school has provided the facilities, such as LCD and projector in every classroom, but some teachers feel reluctant to use them, including my master teacher. She still uses a textbook only in almost meeting.

When I asked her, she said that she knows that her students tend to be more interested when she uses digital media but she has no enough time to make the presentation slides or another media. Besides, she doesn’t want wasting her time in teaching to operate the tools. To anticipate the technical problem, she prefers bring her own tools to use the school’s tools. For example, if she wants to give listening exercise to students, she will bring her own tape recorder from home. However it doesn’t mean that she rejects any implementation of new technology. She allows her students to use the built-in dictionary on their cell phone to translate some difficult words or to google any information. I think she is just a typical digital immigrant who sometimes afraid to try something new.

Although there are still many controversies about the effectiveness of using technology (especially computer-based technology) in language learning, we can conclude that students are more enthusiastic, engaged, and motivated when they study using computer or any digital media (Davies and Hewer, 2010). I noticed the difference when my master teacher taught her students using textbook only and when I taught them with some digital media. Some of them still had a chat when the teacher explained about something orally, but they paid all attention when I explained about procedure text using PowerPoint. They became more excited when I played a video from YouTube to give more example of it, though, in the middle the video had to be stopped due to a technical problem. This fact forced me to admit that she is true, sometimes there are unexpected things happened on those tools that disturb the learning process.

Technology is just a tool, and it cannot substitute the presence of teacher. It’s the teacher’s role to create a lesson that integrating ICT-based experience into the curriculum (McFarlane, as cited in Davies, 2010). I have tried to do that as I told above. I was glad to see the students presented their own procedure text using PowerPoint and another digital media enthusiastically.

Even though it was short, I know from their e-reflection that they enjoyed the session when technology was used. Well, to really move their way in learning language into ICT-based classroom is not easy, but at least they have started doing something new through moving class system.

How Difficult to Avoid "Twin Sins of Design"

After doing two microteaching practices this week, I more realized that the “twin sins of design” is such a big problem for teacher. I, as a student who accustomed to experience fun learning in SSE, wanted to apply it in the class I practiced. But then I found that it can’t always work everywhere.

I tried to make students excited by playing “Spy Racing” game at the beginning of the class. In this game—which is actually modified from running dictation—I asked 3 people in a group to “steal” the “secret information” that were spread around the classroom. After that, they memorized the information and reported it to a “boss” of each group. The boss, then, arranged those unorganized sentences into a good paragraph, which was a procedure text.

I played a video (where the sentences taken from) to check their answer, but shockingly, the video didn’t work! Fortunately, I had written the correct arrangement as a back-up plan. After that, I explained the structure and the language features of procedure text, and then I asked each group to make their own procedure text based on certain topic I gave. All of these activities took 2×40 minutes.

My master teacher’s comment made me realized that my teaching is not really effective, “Well, actually for a teaching simulation, you have done a good job. Everything ran smoothly with the right flow. However, if you become a teacher in a public school you can’t do it every time. You have to fulfill the curriculum demand. You have a lot of topics to cover in certain time. For the activities you have done, I think 80 minutes is too much. Moreover, this topic has been delivered before in my class.”

I realized that the class condition was not really suitable for the game, which required a lot of movements. Imagine when more than 30 students move around the class that full with table quickly. Therefore, in the following day, I omitted the ‘puzzle’ game that has been scheduled in my lesson plan.

In the second day, I asked them to present their procedure text in front of the class while my partner assessed them with presentation rubric. We used it since we want to assess them objectively and systematically.

After that, I moved to the next topic; advertisement. We distributed the ads taken from Jakarta Post and then asked them to discuss some guiding question in some small groups. We designed the questions that can lead them to identify things related to advertisements. After small group discussion, we guide them to conclude it together. I was amazed since we could cover a topic in less than 20 minutes. However, due to limited time, we asked them to do e-reflection by sending it via email.

From their reflection, we know that almost every one enjoyed those two days experience. We’re very glad since they showed enthusiasm during the class, either when discussed, presented their products, or when we explained. The classroom rules we agreed at the beginning of the class really help us to control them. Well, reflecting from my master teacher’s experience–and also mine–I know that it’s rather difficult to fulfill the curriculum and students’ demand at once , especially in a big class. As solution, maybe we can schedule some fun learning activities once a week since students like it so much. :-)

Small Things, Big Impacts

What does come up in your mind if someone ask you to count how much water and electricity you consume in a day, or how many polybag you use? Just wasting your time?

Yup, it's just the same with me when Ms Stien Matakupan, the lecturer of Environmental Studies asked the class to do an environmental audit. But later on, I realized that those small things we often ignore really give impact to our life, now and later, even until hereafter.

Let's look the closest place for us, our room.How many electronic tools do you have? How long you switch on each of them in a day? It sounds worthless, but if you count the power you use (Watt x minutes used, and then multiply it with the amount of CO2 released, you will realized that you have just contributed kilos of carbon into the atmosphere. You can take this quiz to measure how much "poison" you release and how your lifestyle impact to our earth.

Still in your house, take a look how many plastic bag there are.I bet, you will find a lot in your room and your kitchen. The more we buy anything, the more plastic bag we have.

Did you know, if we throw it into the land now, the grandsons of our grandsons can still find the pieces of it in the layer of land? The plastic bag--the soft one--will be fully degraded after 500 years, and many more years for the hard one. I really appreciate the effort of some department store, which create the eco-friendly polybag that can be degraded only in 2 years.



Nevertheless, since there are sooooo many people buy goods there, there will be sooo many plastic bags thrown into the earth. These plastics will decrease the fertility of the soil, or if it is thrown into a river, it will make the stream stagnant and finally it will destruct the ecosystem of the river

So, is still there any way to save our earth? Of course, there are always solutions.One simple thing we can do is saving the use of electricity, as shown in below video.




Besides, there is a simple thing we can do. Buy a paper or canvas bag and bring it whenever we go shopping. When the cashier/merchant starts to put in your belongings into a plastic bag, refuse him/her assertively while giving your own bag, "I'm sorry, I have had my own bag."

Every Student is Smart!

Everyone is special in their own way
We make each other strong
We're not the same, We're different in a good way
Together's where we belong.
(We're All in This Together, OST High School Musical)

I’m always impressed with all things related to Multiple Intelligences. By this frame of mind, every people is viewed as a smart people. Not only one who wins Science Olympiad, or gets the best score in National Examination, but also people that can paint well, talkative, even people who look silent (but actually they think inside). That’s why I think teachers should look students through this framework.

Even though we cannot claim that one method is the best, I think this is the most appropriate way when teachers want to develop students’ skills and their various abilities. It’s suitable with the condition of Indonesia students, who have a lot differences one to each other, even in the same area. Different culture, family background, and parenting style also influence what the most dominant intelligences of a student.

Nevertheless, it’s impossible to accommodate all of the intelligences in one activity in one day. I have planned to give my students questionnaire to obtain what their stronger intelligences are at the beginning of the learning period. So later on, I can modify activities that support students multiple intelligences. Not only vary, the assignments given should also encourage them to think critically. We can use Integration Matrix—that is given in the MI workshop with Pak Iwan—to compose the assignments that are in higher level of Bloom’s taxonomy. Of course not every task support all intelligences but at least there are some intelligences accommodated in one activity. For instance, the teacher can ask students to discuss about a book in a literature circle. In the circle, students are given different roles such as the facilitator (to support students’ interpersonal and verbal-linguistic intelligence), the illustrator (visual-spatial), and the vocabulary developer (verbal linguistic). Since the discussion is done in a group, they can increase their interpersonal intelligence. The intrapersonal people are also given opportunity to express their feeling through reflection journal after the session. Imagine the fact that we can accommodate some intelligences only with one book!

We know that every student actually has all of the intelligences, though the compositions are not the same. To maximize all of the intelligences, teachers can ask students to work in group so they can complete to each other. Because every student is special in their own way--just like the song above--, and teacher's role is to facilitate them to make each other strengthen their intelligences.