Name : Maria Ulfa Class : 3.2

 Summary of Teaching Professionals

A. need to pass the test, students learn for superficial purposes of high scores, and even parents encourage students to get the top ranks because of good values for colleges and careers who pay well for the future. Many learn for money and luxurious life promises. The purpose of learning for many people is no longer holistic as before. Conversely, education is the transfer of knowledge, without transferring morals (good character), so there are many smart but not good characters. Teaching should not only produce students who can achieve the ideal score. Learning should not only be in order to secure a good future.

B. Breaking Down the Profession of Teaching

The job description for the profession of teaching is lengthy and much more than most people realize. Most teachers still work after the school is over, needing to take work home because it’s often too much to do on one sitting. Teaching is a difficult and misunderstood profession and requires a dedicated, patient, and willing person to keep up with all of the job's demands, which are:

• You gotta understand what you teach, and it can’t be what you learned when you were in school a decade ago, it has to be the updated version. So, you’ve to continuously study and review new research within their content area. Just because you are now the one teaching does not mean you are no longer the one learning. Just like your students, you also have the pressure to stay updated, with the additional task of making sure that you’re able to break apart new concepts into terms that your students can understand.

• In the same vein, you have to keep up with and study new instructional pedagogy. Find a way to implement the teaching material to be relevant in daily life to breathe more context into the lesson. 

• Furthermore, you must keep up with the newest technological trends. You, and especially your students, must become tech savvy to stay up with the digital generation. You as a teacher must assess what technology would be advantageous to use in the classroom. In modern society, you must utilize the Internet and social media to search for activities, lessons, and teaching resources that you can utilize within or supplement a lesson. This book can’t stress the importance for you to make your lessons relevant for your students’ everyday lives if not their future.

• But you can’t make the learning goals however you want because s a teacher of an institution you must link your lesson plans onto the learning objectives of the required standards of your institution, which you can find in the curriculum.You as a teacher must arrive at school early, stay late, and spend part of your weekend to make sure you’re prepared. Not to mention, you’re the one setting a good example for your students

C. The Challenges of Teaching

This job is difficult and draining—anyone who had ever been a teacher would tell you this. In the process of writing this book, we have engaged with multiple people with teaching experience to compile a list on the things that makes the profession of teaching challenging. Like we mentioned, teachers don’t just teach.

• The job salary will never make you rich. Teachers are sadly underpaid (except in Finland). Most teachers work take a side job to supplement their income. This condition can change though, if you’re clever to spot opportunities to create lucrative outputs with your teaching.

• Teaching isn’t glamorous, are undervalued and underappreciated by many people in our society. It’s very odd, but our society has the idea that teaching is the most noble perception, but also places a negative stigma that teachers “complain too much and so don’t do much”. Prove them wrong.

• Some other teachers might not make it easy on you. New teachers might be intimidated with “veteran” teachers, and some “veteran” teachers might even be cold to collaborate or provide support such as lesson plans and ideas.

• The way kids communicate is different. This younger generation has their own lingo and slangs; be prepared to feel old and try not to take too much offense if they send you texts, tweets, or Facebook comments that are too casual. Reprimand and remind them first.

• Lastly, some students could be very inappropriate, sharing and asking topics such as relationships, sex, pregnancies, drugs, family gossips, and even give away movie spoilers.

D. The Rewards of Teaching

This profession is hard, but also bore the best fruits. This book has also asked many teachers to share what they found rewarding in their profession.

• You're a contributing member of society. This may sound basic, but you'll really feel it when you look around the street and see people who are just getting by selling street food and toys or cleaning the road in the heat. It tugs the heartstrings and motivates you to do better for your community.

• You'd look around at your fellow teachers and realize you're surrounded by some of the most caring and dedicated people in the world (even if some of your colleagues not easy to work with). As much as teachers find things hard, they still stick to the job because they are invested for the future.

• The job market is both flexible and permanent. Teachers are a necessary part of our society so this job will always exist. 

• The best reward most teachers agree on is when they found those students who really love to learn. The ones who have passion for a subject and a work ethic to accompany it. Help them and give them the best opportunities to grow. 

• Years later, you might get a blast from the past when your ex-student sent a thank you card or a picture of them making it big in their lives.

E. What Makes a Good Teacher?

    Other things that a professional teacher should not commit might be:

• Being afraid to apologize or admit when you make a mistake

• Treating students differently based on personal interests

• Ignoring a student

• Creating unfair rules

• Misusing your authority

• Having a negative attitude on a consistent basis

• Never giving control over to your students

• Being hypocritical

• Using profanity (swear/curse words)

• Violating a student’s personal space

• Giving vindictive or counterproductive threats

• Holding things against a student that is beyond their control, such as a grudge on their mother or father who was an alumni and had been a bad student or such reasons

 As mentioned above, being complacent—stagnant, not improving, apathetic—with how you teach is one of the biggest negatives a teacher can commit. It does a disservice to your students and education as a whole too. The list for what teachers shouldn’t do is very long, and so does the list for the things you should do. We can simplify the lifelong journey of improving yourself with this neat diagram below.

Here are several things that an awesome teacher should do:

• Have a positive attitude. In fact, be funny. Students will naturally look forward to coming to your class and learning if they know that you aren’t uptight and rigid, and a motivated teacher would make students fired up.

• Be consistent. Students must know what your expectations are on a daily basis. You’ll quickly lose their attention and attention with inconsistency. For example, you asked students to use or buy a certain book for the course, so align your tests with the material in that book because kids often get angry when what they’re asked isn’t the same with what they’ve studied.

• Be fair. Treat everyone equally. Giving a different set of consequences for the same actions will undermine your authority.

• Give students control. Give them options. Student autonomy makes students more likely to engage.

F. The Status Quo of Education in Indonesia

According to Ministry of Education and Culture, Indonesia recorded 169.378 public schools and 138.277 private schools, totaling to 307.655 schools in 2018.

Indonesia’s population will reach its peak with about 70% of our demography as part of the working age group in 2030, but our economy is still declining because job creation is still not accelerated and youth unemployment statistics is still rising due to tight labor regulations, skill mismatches, and low education quality. Indonesia has known this for a while since 2000 and have implemented major policy reforms to improve education such as:

• A constitutional mandate to spend 20% of the national budget on education. However, since national budget is 15% of GDP, Indonesia’s spending for education is only 3% of GDP, one of the lowest in the region. An increase is needed because if you think education is expensive, you should try the cost of ignorance.

• Decentralization of education sector functions to the district and school level

• The Teacher Law in 2005

• Increase of resources to schools with the School Operational Assistance Grant (Bantuan Operasional Sekolah, or BOS) program

• Support for parents enrolling their children in schools through the Smart Indonesia Program (Program Indonesia Pintar, or PIP).

G. To Teach or Not to Teach?

Internet, books, all those resources are simply tools that store knowledge for children to reach. But they neither know how to reach for them yet nor the best way to grasp them. It is frustrating to see students who have tremendous potential but do not want to put in the hard work necessary to maximize that potential. The journey is hard, but it doesn’t have to be void of fun. Education is no longer as monotonous as it used to be when primary education started to become compulsory all over the world sometime after 1775, but it still has challenges from so many different factors because while your job title is ‘teacher’ you have to do more than just ‘teach’. You have administration duties, you have to manage things beyond lessons, and beyond teaching you also have to learn just like your students. A good teacher expects their students to succeed and also expect themselves to succeed.

H. Educational Books that May Inspire You

Burgess, S., & Houf, B. (2017). Lead like a pirate: Make school amazing for your students and staff. Dave Burgess Consulting, Incorporated.

• In this sequel to bestseller Teach Like a Pirate, the PIRATE technique is applied to school leadership. Whether you are a current or aspiring school administrator, read this book for sustaining a culture of excellence in your school.

Goldstein, D. (2015). The teacher wars: A history of America's most embattled profession. Anchor.

• The history of public education and women as educators in America. Goldstein looks at the historic roots of teaching as a women’s profession. Especially compelling is her extensive historical research; she takes the reader on a journey of public education in America from the 1830s to the present day. This book is perfect if you want to learn about how gender disparity in teacher salaries came to be.

Summary Of Teaching Elements

A. Instructional Planning

Teachers plan. Good teachers don’t simply “wing it”. Teachers have to organize their lesson plans by considering the curriculum, school resources, student motivation, student ability and other variables that will affect all instructional decisions teachers must decide before they actually teach. Below is a comparison of what excellent and poor planning may look like.

B. Your Topic: Curriculum and Syllabus

A curriculum contains all factors involved in an educational program, and one of it is called a syllabus, which covers the portion of what topics should be taught in a subject or content area. Subject syllabus is a unit of the curriculum containing 7 primary segments: instructor data, general class data, course targets, course arrangements, grading and assessment, learning assets, and the course calendar. The table below details the differences between curriculum and syllabus.

C. Your Learning Objective: Taxonomy and Task Analysis

Teachers are not directly or solely responsible to create a school curriculum and syllabus, but you will be responsible to determine the goals of your classes. Specifying learning objectives is commonly difficult because schools generally have a broad spectrum of goals and individual teachers prioritize different things. For example, imagine this scenario of three physical exercise teachers discussing their goals:

• A wants the students to develop their muscle strength and flexibility so no matter what kind of other exercises they do, they’ll have a good foundation. 

• Prefers students to know many different kinds of exercises so they will be able to differentiate aerobic and anerobic exercises. 

• Meanwhile C is concerned about when the students will inevitably leave school and wants students to be motivated to continue exercising for life so they will not end up as couch potatoes.

D. Your Learning Activities: Lesson Plan

There are some types of assignments you can choose for the class activity:

• Whole-class; you lecture the class as a whole and have them all participate in discussion.

• Small groups; you have students to work on assignments in groups.

• Workshops; you get students to perform various tasks simultaneously.

• Independent work; you ask students to complete their assignments individually.

• Peer learning; you ask them to work together and learn from one another.

• Contractual work; both you and your students come to an agreement of what kind of assignments students should do and what their deadline will be. 

When you choose the type of assignment, you must choose the type that would provide the most benefit for the students based on your assessment measures (Biggs, 2011). Try to ask:

• What level of learning are my students at now?

• What level of learning do my students need to get to?

E. Your Evaluation: Assessment

You should be intimately familiar with this portion. As students, you have to participate in quizzes, do your exercises, and submit your home assignments. Now, as teachers, you are the one who will prepare and create them. Though in recent years, you may even ask your students to create their own questions and answer them on their own so the students can provoke their own knowledge.