Summary and Suggestions

Purposes of Practicum

The objectives of Sea Teacher project are:

1. To enable pre-service student teachers to develop their teaching skills and pedagogy

2. To encourage the pre-service student teachers to practice their English skills

3. To allow the pre-service student teachers to gain a broader regional and world view

4. To expose future teachers to diverse teaching and learning situations and opportunities, and the value of flexibility.

According to me, four objectives above already meet my needs.

Procedures of Practicum

The four stages that the student teachers should follow during one month exchange program are:

1st Stage	Orientation and class observation
2nd Stage	Teaching assistant Working with classroom teacher Lesson plan consolidation
3rd Stage	Teaching in classroom Adequate teaching hours Monitoring and evaluation by mentor
4th Stage	Reflection and lesson learned Reflection of student’s performance in general & discussion of the lesson learned Finalizing blog and report (if any required by  Sending University) Mentor helps to check the writing

I did not get any serious problems in following these four stages, but because I could not finish my blog report when I was at NIPSC, my mentor also could not help me to check all of my writing on blog.

Outcomes of Practicum

I find here the teaching of English is much more successful than in my own country, Indonesia. I am impressed with the students’ ability. Even they are still in Junior High School, many students can construct English sentences with minor errors. This encourages me to study about the way of English teachers there conduct effective learning activities in the class. Therefore, I learned a lot about their effective methods, approaches, and techniques that I can implement to Indonesian students.

The Challenges of Practicum

Before started my practicum, actually I already knew that the English ability of Filipino Students are very good. I got this information from my friends who joined Sea Teacher project on the previous batches. That makes me excited and nervous at the same time. During my early practicum, I was expecting that all my students could understand every single words which I said. Then I realized, some of them sometimes got difficult to understand me because I speak different accent. I had to make my voice louder, not too fast in speaking, use verbal language and technology for help, so that they could understand me clearly.

The time management became a big challenge for me, I used to sleep late night while I was there. Beside I had to make lesson plan for every session, I had to assess my students’ work one by one and input their scores as the data that I would give to my cooperating teacher. Usually there were two type of tests (quiz and homework) for every lesson. In the same time because I had no experiences in teaching some of my lessons like English literature, it takes time for me to prepare the materials and strategy, to make sure that I was ready. I also had to make summative test about all materials that I had taught to them at the end of my practicum. Saturday and Sunday were not effective days to do all my tasks because we always went to the city and some of beautiful places that exposed us with Philippines’ culture and society.

Overall Impression

Finally, I will not change my opinion since the beginning, that to be the participant of Sea Teacher project is a big grace for me. Here, I am not only could develop my teaching skills and pedagogy, practice my English, broaden my view with Philippines culture, and exposed with diverse teaching-learning situations, but I also find my new family.

Suggestions for Future Improvement

NIPSC Laboratory Junior High School is a school which has a good quality with its great teachers and students. I do not have many suggestions for the school, but I hope the facilitation for teaching and learning in the schools can be improved. It will be very nice also if the exchange student teacher is assigned to teach many classes. So in the short period of practicum, he/ she will be exposed with more learning situations and various type of students.

I hope Seameo can encourage more country in southeast Asia to join sea teacher project, and also give us the detail time about the deadline finishing and checking our blog report. Please consider also to include excursion experiences, grammar, and language use as the blog assessment criteria.

Last but not least, for the next exchange student teachers, you know it is a great chance for you to explore many things that you may never have before. You may feel that you are not good enough, but as a long as you have strong determination to pass every obstacle, to face your fear, and to learn from your mistakes every day, you will become a great one.  Please have a good manner when you are there, as a foreign. Place yourselves as a learner, give the best that you can. You also may be asked to present about your country and your culture, so pre prepare yourselves for that. Make friends and try to have a good relationship. I am counting on you!