This Practice Teaching or Practicum prepares us, Student-Teachers, as we face the real world as time passes by. It serves as our training ground, in filling up our knowledge and skills that couldn’t be done by the books alone, because I believe that experience is one of the best teachers. With this, it trains us to be effective and efficient teachers of the future. To attain the needed and required skills to be globally and locally competitive as we approach the real world scenario. By this practicum, it helps us to explore and discover other teaching pedagogies that we may use and apply in our own classrooms in the future. Not only learn from the positive things, but learn from the less positive and do better from it. To improve our English language and communication skills since the English language is recognized as the universal language of the world. To unveil and enlighten us into another perspectives and new realizations in life.
At first I thought, the receiving university will be where I would have my practice teaching but then it’s a different school. I was given a whole week to keenly observe about the learning environment, the pupils, and the teachers’ methods and procedures in teaching. As well as taking notes of their routine in five different classes. In the following week, I already started teaching and was given a schedule for the whole week with different class each day since the management there thought of the kids primarily that they would be jealous if we, the Pre-Service Teachers, would only be teaching in one class. For the first and second week I taught about Maintaining Health and for the last week I taught about different Professions in their community. I prepared the lesson plans and all the materials that I would be using.
I strongly believe that the overall outcome of my practicum was a success. Right from the very first day we first stepped in the school, I was exhilarated with all the experiences, memories and learning I would gain, and with that, it’s a success already for me because the opportunity itself was already self-fulfilling. I was able to learn a lot of things aside from the main purpose of this project which was learning about new and different teaching pedagogies, but also about helping us be well-equipped to face and conquer the real world as we finish this chapter in our life and move on to the next. From applying all the lessons we learned from first to four years in being in college, I could say it’s different. My resourcefulness, flexibility, adaptability, time management and communication skills were all tested at the same time. Since the education system of Indonesia is different from the Philippines, I was delighted to be able to experience it firsthand than just by hearing it from others or reading it online. Being able to join this SEA-Teacher Project, I was able to reflect and realize a lot of things unveiling me new perspectives in life. In such about religion due to the fact that Indonesia is Muslim country and I am a Catholic, I was able to learn a lot from their culture, practices, and beliefs in which I respected them and that’s what they did as well. I was able to discover and learn something new from myself, a side that I did not was there in the first place. My confidence and self-esteem was strengthened. My love for the kids and for teaching grew fonder and bigger deep in my heart. I was able to meet new and for lifetime friends, new experiences, create memorable memories, and find a place that I can call my other home.
Living far away from my family wasn’t really hard for me since I have been living in a dormitory for almost four years now. But I won’t deny that I had quick moments where I just wanted to go back to the Philippines because I miss my family and then suddenly I a thought would pop on my mind that one month would be fast so I just decided to enjoy every second of it. We were lucky since Philippines’ been integrating and utilizing the English the language even when we were younger however for some, like for example in Indonesia, they treat the English language as a foreign language in which they do not use it in a daily conversational situations. During which we had a hard time at first communicating with people outside the school, good thing there’s the application of Google translate, and our buddies who helped and taught us some basic Bahasa and Bengkulu language that helped us survive there for a month. In terms of different culture since different religion, I really didn’t have a hard time because I chose to respect them, and they chose to respect me as well.
I am beyond grateful and blessed of being able to participate in this SEA-Teacher Project. I was excited and nervous at the same time to travel for the first time overseas, alone. I was excited and exhilarated to experience new things, meet new people, go to places, taste different food, experience different culture, and to gain memories. The moment I met Dr. Azwandi Bahri, our Coordinator, I felt at ease. He stood by our side and assured us that we can trust him, that we can count on him, and I am forever grateful because he exceeded his role as a coordinator, he acted as our father in another country, in our new found home. He was literally one call/text away when we needed something. He did not only opened his heart to us, but also his home which we were welcomed wholeheartedly by his whole family. The people in Bengkulu were all nice and they treated us fairly where they did not take advantage of us. For the reason of since Filipinos and Indonesians have similar features and there were a lot of moments when the natives their talked to us in Bahasa and we were like, "English only." In terms of the food, we always had a heard time to decide where to eat because all of their food were spicy but we were able to overcome that by cooking Filipino dishes sometimes and really searching for food all around the city. The place where we stayed for a month was beautiful. It's comfortable and near UNIB. Even though we have different religion, culture and practices, both parties were not closed-mined in learning about each other's identity and I felt genuine respect from them. We were also able to roam around the city and outside the city. Basically, I will forever treasure this memory deep in my hypothalamus and I highly recommend it to others especially my younger batch to join as well this project because it's a whole new different experience. Because I really fell in love with the place, the school, the people, I do not wanted to go home yet. I wanted to stay longer.
This opportunity was amazing and I hope larger number of students could get to experience it as well but due to financial limitation not many could afford it. It's better if there would be some partner organizations who could donate or sponsor students. Also, if there would be some revisions or changes in terms of some papers or guidelines I think it's best to announce it before the project even started to avoid confusions. But overall, I love SEAMEO.