Reflection of School Experience Program (5th semester)

             The challenging task was coming again, School Experience Program (SEP). It was earlier than usual because this 5^th semester, SEP was done in the 3^rd and 4^th week. I was surprised enough because it means I’ve just been learning in campus for 2 weeks and I suddenly have to go and teach senior high school students individually. I thought it would be really challenging, teaching individually for the first time since I experienced the SEP from the 1^st semester.

There are 3 specific tasks from 3 courses. One of them is from Affective Education for 21^st Century Learning course. For completing that task, I had to observe a teacher in implementing affective education in the teaching and learning process. Actually, in the first semester I had experienced that kind of observation task, but for observing the implementation of affective education, it was a new thing. At that moment, I was really curious what will I find. I guessed I should be sharply pay attention to the activity that is done because I think implementing affective education in class is implicitly done.

Fortunately, in this semester I got a nice place and full of nice people inside the school.. I was experiencing the SEP in SMA N 71 Jakarta. The students are really cooperative in doing the learning process. Besides, I was guided by an 11 grade mathematics teacher which is next called master teacher. The master teacher allowed me to observe his classes. Sometimes, he also shared and told his opinion and perception about his students although I think it was not the precise ones. However, he is actually a nice people who willing to guide me doing the SEP in SMA 71.

Shortly, I have observed the teaching process. I found that the master teacher did not only focus to the cognitive domain but also to the affective domain of students’ learning. As like as Smith and Ragan reveal that affective learning involves formation of attitudes, motivation, and values, the master teacher also tried to cover that formation in his teaching. He asked the students to have a dialogue in the middle of the learning process. He was actually implementing lecturing in his class so that he was easy enough to cut the learning and started to give students advice. He reminded the students to be careful both of in riding the vehicle or in choosing kind of foods. It shows that he guided students to have a positive attitude by reminding the students. Besides, he was also addressing the value to the students by admonishing the long-haired male students and motivating the students for becoming a good Muslim such as ask students to do Shalat Dhuha. Furthermore, he also motivated the students to study hard so that they could pass the exam.

The master teacher told that he choose that approaches to teach students life skills because he thinks mathematics skills is not enough, he has a bigger responsible as a teacher. He said he slipped the dialogue in the middle of learning process as an intermezzo so that the students will not going dizzy when learning mathematics. Even though he had good intention to teach students some of affective domain, I think his way to deliver the messages was not effective yet. Although sometimes his approaches made the students laugh but I think there are some opinion that is not appropriate. Almost all of his advice was delivered by giving a bad stereotype to the contrary. For example, when he reminded the students to be smart in choosing the healthy food, he refers to the price of food. He said that we have to buy an expensive food because the cheap food is obviously made by bad composition of substance. I think it would be better if the master teacher guide the students to be smart in choosing food by choosing foods that has a good vitamin and substance that needed by human.

Furthermore, when the master teacher motivated the science students to study hard, there are 2 points that I would like to criticize. The first one is the master teacher only motivated students in the lower level of learning motivation which is showed when the master teacher told that they should study hard because their goal of learning is for passing the exam whatever their school and whenever they study. I think it will guide the students to focus only to the test rather than to the learning process itself, and it doesn’t tend to facilitate students to develop their competences. Another critic is for the way of master teacher motivated science students by comparing them to the social students. He perceived that the science students should be more diligent because they are smarter than the social students. He raised the students’ confidence by dropping other students’ worth. It was really tickle for me because he insulted the social students’ competences in front of science students. I think the impact will not good enough for the science students, although they will have a high self confidence it is not because they have a good self image and self esteem but it is because they feel superior to others. Besides, it is also unfair for the social students; they are the victim of teacher’s paradigm of their competences that is not surely right.

In other words, the good intension should be executed by a good manner. As like as mathematics instruction, affective instruction also demand the teachers to mastering the concept of what skills and knowledge that we are going to teach. I think it would be better if the master teacher find another approaches to teach those value and motivation to the students. We could provide wider activities for the students to build their self image and self esteem so that they can increase their self confidence. Furthermore, there are some skills in affective domain that should also be developed such as interpersonal skills, communication skills, collaboration skills and problem solving skills. I think we could provide the group activities for students in order to develop those skills. Providing moment for students to learn how to work together in a group, how to communicate the idea to others, how to response and argue others opinion, how to collaborate various potential to reach the same goal and how to solve the complex problem is very important in implementing the affective education. I think it is what the master teacher should do in the learning process, and so do I.