10 SESMA-ly Days

Konnichiwa! O-genki desu ka? Hahaha~ I’m experiencing some changes inside, and by changes, I mean I’m getting Japanised each day. Muahaha. People must think that I am forgetting my own root after I have begun to enrol in BJP401 with my sensei [get that? せんせい!]. Anyway, this is not a post about me and my so-called Japanication. This is an appreciation post about my ten days working... err... observing the teachers and stuff in SESMA.

My ten days at Sekolah Sains Sultan Mahmud a.k.a. SESMA has been a wonderful experience for me. This Field Experience taught me a lot about functioning as a teacher in the school. Well, that, and other things…

ROS and the observations

Two important things that we were supposed to do for our Field Experience were School Orientation Programme [ROS] and Class Observations. For the class observation, I was needed to observe on how my mentor taught her class. There were four sessions and amazingly, all of them involved form ones’ classes. I gained lots of useful things for me to do in my own classes… you know, during the future of course.

Work, work, work…

SESMA’s teachers were busy... like really, really busy. They worked all the time. I guess that is obvious as SESMA is stipulated to excel academically. Their hard work paid off since SESMA always comes on top in the state of Terengganu.

As for the students, lots, and I mean, lots of homework were given to them, at least that was what the senior assistant told me. The students rarely had time to have leisure, and some couldn’t handle the stress of doing too many things, so they just quitted.

The students are bigger than me

Yes, being a new teacher… okay... a trainee teacher, SESMA was pretty intimidating at first. Some of that intimidation came from the reason that the students were bigger than me, physically. Yeah, they respected me and called me ‘Sir’ [I felt like a matured lad, bahhh]. I was asked to have some ‘relief classes’ with forms four and five.

The Form five students had just finished their TOV Exam a few days earlier. I tried to be a good to them and asked them whether they had any questions that lingered in their noggins… but apparently they didn’t have any, or they actually didn’t know what to ask. Apparently, I myself was not prepared to teach them something. For form four, I had to teach two classes [in the same time!] the poem ‘In the Midst of Hardship’. The boys were noisy little… err… guys. What d’ya expect? Boys will be boys. The girls were fine, and they tried to learn something about the poem at the very least. Haha~ but things went well.

Game time!!!

I, with the help of my friend from IPG KB, was given the honour to inaugurate Form One’s English Camp. It was actually a one-hour session to improve the students’ English. The objective of the camp was actually to teach them grammar, but we took a different path and decided to give the students a time to have fun with the language. They had enough with grammar during their normal classes, right?

We played The Hot Seat, and yeah, it was fun seeing the boys and girls trying to describe the things to their leaders. Learning should be entertaining, don’t you think so?

Still a long way to go

I was attracted the morning’s speech by a SESMA student during the assembly. She told the truth, at least to those who listened of course – assembly IS always filled with chit-chats and gossips. Bacl to the main point: what’s the truth? Terengganuese students still have a long way to go in making English as a part of their daily life.

From writing to speaking, accuracy and fluency, Terengganuese are left behind other states. Students, even SPM students, are unable to write proper sentences, all kinds of mistakes occur; too many problems flagged their understanding. Accent riddles their conversation. Their fluency is thwarted since they rarely use the language to communicate with their friends.

Gambatte Kudasai, Fikku-sensei! [Heheh~!]

The road to become a teacher is riddled with obstacles and chances. I know my weaknesses and my strong points. SESMA is just the beginning. I still have three years to go~