Sabtu, 10 Desember 2011 Just relax, it would be easy! :) Diposting oleh an.pane di 18.15

I was happy when I knew that I would have teaching experience in my senior high school.  At the first day, I arrived there to have an observation. I met my favourite English teacher, who gives me an image of a good teacher. I also felt more motivated when I knew that he was also chosen to be my master teacher. My friends and I thought that I was very lucky and everything was going to be easy for me. Surprisingly, I faced some situation that I did not expect before.

I was going to enter my class, XI science 1 to observe. Many teachers there said that it was one of the best classes with clever students. I predicted before that it was the same as the one in my batch: smart, serious, and cool students are ready to study. When I came there to do observation, I felt like there was a light stroke my head. Boom!!! I found such a noisy class with talkative students, even when the class already started. It made me force myself to think about the teaching methods and strategies that I had to use the next day.

It was the first time I had to teach my class. My master teacher told me to prepare them for the test that was going to be conducted on Friday. He gave me the reading material on the textbook. He said that he had to use it for the test because he was assigned to do so by the foundation there. I looked at it and found that it was a literature text with some high-level vocabularies. Then, I told the students to read and learn about the text. I was not surprised when one of them said that it was too difficult and she did not understand what the story talks about. Once one of them said so, the others followed. They became nervous and the class became noisy again.

Because I already knew what the questions would be like from my master teacher, I informed them that the test would not be hard. I gave them guidelines to focus on some points on the story. I also opened the discussion about the story. They asked some questions and learned about it. I said that they should relax because the test would not be hard. I mentioned the word ‘easy’ many times. I hoped it could motivate them to learn and try their best for the test.

I believe that words are very powerful. It made me repeat motivating statements for couple of times. I also gave them guidelines as the reading strategy. I made it as one of the motivation strategies too where they would feel ‘more safe’ because of finding the way that made it easy for them to read it. Then, it would decrease their anxiety. After the anxiety decreased, they would believe that they could accomplish the test easily.

I think the title above does not only work for my students, but also for me when I was nervous about this teaching practice. Just relax, it would be easy!

There are many ways to motivate our students. We just need to be sensitive to decide which way we want to take.