Teaching Practicum Journey Continues

This time was a whole new environment for me since this is an all-male class. I was expecting a noisier classroom over the all-female ones since boys are known to be very playful and have challenges in containing themselves. To my surprie, the all-male class actively took part of the lesson discussion. I started it similarly as with the all-female class the day before. This day, this section I was teaching is under Automotive Program. I had a little conversation with them about motorcycles and machines with the help of transalation. I thought it helped me connect to the students and it made them lower down their walls in learning new things with me in return.

Another class for today was a mixed section of male and female. It was also my first time to handle such kind of gender mixture. I had the same topic and so the way the class was carried out was how it has always been with the last 3 classes. This time I had a little trouble in dividing them into groups where males are not mixed with the boys in respect to the proximity of each gender based on their religion and culture. I had to devise a strategy where the boys, regardless of their number has to come up with the same number of answers as with the girls even if the girls are in majority in number. The class is under Multimedia Program.

Time to be Taught

Half of the day was spent in teaching. It was now 4:00 in the afternoon and Dr. Irmayani picked us up for dinner. We had a conversation as to what transpired to our classes for this week. We shared our challenges and successes to the dean to which she consequently gave us pieces of advice on how to address the roadblocks we mentioned. She shared her experiences in teaching language and how it is very dangerous to teach grammar in isolation. We had dinner at a nearby shopping center and got to meet her mother we call “Nenek” and her brother Mr. Irfan. Over dinner, she mentioned few things regarding our itinerary during the entire program which includes the international forum. A big challenge there is that we will be the resource speakers ourselves. Along with the challenge is the promising reward of being able to talk in front of the students and share our experiences in understanding culture and teaching-learning experience of English language. We are looking forward to that day to come.