Summary of chapter 1 and 2

 Name : Wildani Haniva Safitra

NIM : 1988203040

Class : 3.2

Courses : Model dan Pendekatan Pemnbelajaran

Lecturer : Dr. Herlinawati, M.Ed

CHAPTER 1

TEACHING PROFESSION

A. What Learning and Teaching Should Be

With laptop and projector becoming the most common technology schools provide for classrooms and the curriculum shifting to student-centered from teacher-centered, one of the most common teaching practice we see in classes is PowerPoint presentations of the lesson material. Some teachers could spend the majority of classroom time sitting on their desk, lecturing and going through slides, barely interacting with the students and expecting them to be able to keep up with mere commentaries.

In contrast, when students are tasked to give presentations in front of the class, some teachers have left them largely unacknowledged in favor of their own personal work or social media, giving little if no feedback to the students’ performance and the result of their research to make their PowerPoint slides.Praise it as a provider of information all we want, but we cannot deny that it has also seemingly rendered exercises, homework, even teachers to be “redundant” in some students’ eyes when they can simply find the answers from the Internet.

Nowadays, we are even seeing regular headlines of teachers bullying students and students molesting teachers. To put it plainly, the sheer lack of respect for each other as lifelong learners is staggering. However, despite the regular theme of the scenarios above, it is not this book’s intention to blame technology.

Teachers were essential for children to be smart. Teachers were highly necessary for kids to develop an intellectual way of thinking, a philosophical way of self-reflecting. What the teachers know and believe were passed down to the next generation. As such, the good deed of helping and teaching were passed down as well. People learned for the sake of learning and satiating their curiosity of the world. Teachers taught their students with their hearts, and students listened to their teachers’ advice.

B. Breaking Down the Profession of Teaching

  The division of labor due to social, economic and technological factors create what is known as professions or jobs. Teaching as a profession can be described as a professional occupation in the education sector based on a specialization on a certain field. In the mini society that is the classroom, how teachers teach can make a significant difference, for teachers are the gateway to knowledge… or they at least used to be. Now, however, what human teachers know, the Internet knows much more and can deliver all kinds of information on as many subjects and skills that have been created instantaneously to students.

So why is the teaching profession still necessary?

Because teachers are still needed to give focus, to monitor, to assess.

Teachers do much more than just teach.

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

•Able to find a way to implement the teaching material to be relevant in daily life

•Able to  keep up with the newest technological trends.

•teacher   the one setting a good example for your students.

•Organize your classroom in a student friendly way

•Develop ways to differentiate instruction to challenge all students without frustrating them while still ensuring that everyone meet the learning objective.

•You must decide whether or not a seating chart is appropriate.

•You must monitor students while they are working independently.

•Decide on a behavior management plan, which means “gaining mastery” over classroom management, procedures, and expectation.

• Try to formulate questions that require both higher and lower level responses so every student have the opportunity to participate in the discussion

•You must break down data from assessments to self-assess whether or not the new content is successfully taught or if it needs changes.

•You gotta grade and record every student’s papers in a timely manner.

•You’re obliged to attend in the required professional development because you’ve to learn the content and figure out how to apply it to your classroom. 

•You must prepare a backup plan so you can adapt and change on the fly.

•Obviously, establish healthy working relationships with your co-workers.

•keep your kids’ parents informed of their progress on a regular basis (by calls, emails, or face-to-face conversations).

•Plan with other grade level and/or content level teachers to determine common themes, objectives, and activities.

•Oversee classroom fundraising opportunities

C. The Challenges of Teaching

•  The job salary will never make you rich.
• Teaching isn’t glamorous, are undervalued and underappreciated by many people in our society.
• There’s a general lack of respect.
• Since students themselves also have general lack of respect for their own teachers, classroom management is even worse.
• If the school’s student body had low achievements, the school’s income lessens, so yourclass might be overcrowded or only have outdated tech and books. If the school is understaffed too, teachers might have to take on dual roles to save school budget.
• The practice of standardization means all students are treated and taught as if they are the same, when in fact some of them have high or low ability, motivation, and other factors. The best teacher evaluates and teaches each student differently, but doing so came at the price of the teacher’s time and energy.
• When parents aren’t supportive of you, teaching a specific student could be more difficult. Many parents aren’t supportive, only show up to complain, and don’t actually know what’s going on with their child. There are few supportive parents who are engaged
• This job gives you tons of paperwork, mostly grading which is time-consuming, monotonous, and boring.
• You’d have to arrive earlier and would probably stay late to grade papers, prepare for next lessons, other paperwork.
• Time is limited. You only have them for a short period of time to prepare them for the next level.  So, maximize the time you have with them.
• At the same time, while teaching practices are encouraged to be updated on a constant basis, society at large and local emphasizes standardized testing results. Nowadays, teachers are judged on their class’ test scores .
• Education could be too political.
• 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.
• 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

⬥ 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.

⬥ You and other teachers share the same experiences of this emotionally draining job. When there are too many responsibilities, teachers can share the duties based on each other’s weaknesses and strengths.

⬥ At some point, someone might make you cry. You'll find support from unexpected people; the admin you thought who disliked you but helped you, the parent who seemed angry but sees your dedication to their child, or the student that might be unruly but was the first to lend help.

⬥ Your kids will come up with some of the funniest statements and the laughter you all shared in the class will be one of the most memorable experience. During breaks, you might have and even give endless “you'll never guess what this kid said.”

⬥ Many students might claim their lessons were boring, but for you teaching would never be a bore. Time, students, topics, even the state of the society are just some of the many variables that make every class different. Maybe you found better examples or analogies for your second class of the same unit; you could tell the students to share what they know to the class you held first that morning to promote team work and study groups.

⬥ Your students learn stuff, obviously. But there's a difference between giving a student an A or 100 and knowing that this kid had worked hard to bring up their Ds to As.

⬥ You learn stuff. Sure, you learn so you can teach, but you also learn surprising responses from your kids to things that adult-you may take for granted. Whether it's a different interpretation of a classic story, an unconventional approach to solving a problem, or a whole new outlook on life, you can learn as much from your kids as they will from you.

⬥ You can be legit nerds. Awesome teachers teach enthusiastically with a passion that’s like a motivational virus. They engage students in creative lessons that spark self-interest and the desire to learn more about a particular topic. You basically have a great platform to share your passions with others.

⬥ This career gives you the chance to collaborate with all kinds of people (e.g., students, parents, college students, community members, organization members, orphans, professors, professionals, etc.) It's up to you to connect and create more opportunities.

⬥ Teaching rarely makes you rich, but you can pay your bills. The salary generally isn't so bad, plus you get health insurance and a pension pretty much guaranteed. That's more than a lot of professions can say.

⬥ You can build a vocation, not just a way to pay the bills, because you’d be pushed to build your skills and innovate new ways to teach.

⬥ 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?

  Ideally, learners should be able to choose their own teacher. But in conventional education, students have limited choice. Learning and teaching should not make life as a job training. Both students and teachers have many values to pass down beyond simple knowledge, and so should be open-minded to accept them wholeheartedly.

  Teachers are not perfect, will make mistakes, and occasionally exercise poor judgment. There are times that you’re simply overwhelmed, lose focus, or cannot remember why you chose to stay committed to this profession. These things are human nature.

What makes you a good teacher is your respect for your students’ struggle. Never belittle them. As teachers, your words and actions are powerful. You have the power to transform, but also the power to tear apart. Be professional by choosing your words carefully. Teachers have an awesome responsibility that should never be taken lightly. The words you use (as well as the ones you omit) can actually impact the intellectual abilities of your students.

Every kid is different and these differences should be embraced. If all kids were the same our jobs would be boring. Therefore:

1.  Do not yell at or call a student in front of their peers. If you expect them to respect you, you must respect them too.
2.   Don’t claim that a student“will never be able to do that.”Encourage your students, don’t discourage them, even if their dreams may sound lofty or impossible. No teachers should crush any student’s dreams.
3. Don’t accuse a student is“just lazy.” When students are repeatedly told that they are lazy, it becomes a part of who they are.
4. Telling them “That’s a stupid question!” is a big No. Always address their curiosity (appropriately).
5. Don’t dismissively say “I’ve already gone over that. You should have been listening.” Each student understands differently and your job is to make sure everyone understands.
6.  Honestly, never say “I don’t care if my students like me.”Teaching is often more about relationships than it is about teaching itself. You can accomplish so much more when students like you genuinely.
7. Please, do not gossip about another teacher with a parent, student, or another teacher.
8.    Always strive to improve and become better.

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

Here are several things that an awesome teacher should do:

• Have a positive attitude. In fact, be funny
• Be consistent.
• Be fair.
•  Give students control. Give them options.
• Be flexible, else both you and your students wouldkeep failing because of your unwillingness to adapt.
•  As new teachers you might want to be all friendly and not stern, but teachers must assert authority so classroom would run smoothly throughout the semester.
•   Know your resources. Where’s the school’s list of rules? The library? The office to send an injured kid? Get information of these in advance.
• Be specific.
• Notice how kids learn, react, and interact in different ways—Be creative.
• Get to know what makes them tick (what motivates them personally), like a certain subject, a favorite activity, or an incomprehensible obsession with a fandom.

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.

As can be seen on the chart above, Indonesia’s proportion of school levels are highly uneven. There is too many elementary schools and too few secondary and tertiary schools, so it is inevitable in Indonesia to have huge number of children only stopping at elementary level, leading to increasing number of youth unemployment.

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. 

1. The teacher Law in 2005
2. 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).

Improvement of our education is demanded because our population in the near future will be—nay, already is—expected to have the four skills that are desired, essential, and the 2020 Target of Education are Critical Thinking, Creative Thinking, Computer Speak, and Collaborative Competence.

G. To Teach or Not to Teach?

  In this modern world, if school teachers don’t teach, can children be smart?

Yes.

They have the Internet. They have books. They can self-learn all sorts of subjects, languages, skills and specific professions if they so choose. So, what are teachers for? 

To give focus. To monitor. To assess.

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’.

We ask you: why do YOU teach?

Think thoroughly about your answer. If you are serious in pursuing a career in teaching, you will find this book most useful in your journey.

CHAPTER 2

TEACHING ELEMENT

A. Instructional Planning

   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.

  Society now sees learning as a development of strategies to encode and retrieve information, learners as active participants who try to make sense of their environment using strategies, and teachers as partners in the process of interpreting information. This perspective is called as cognitive psychology (Brunning et al., 2004).

Therefore, instructional planning nowadays is based on cognitive psychology, and at the core of it is teacher thinking and teacher knowledge, which are the way you think and what you know respectively. These two different factors are interdependent because the way teachers think depends on what they know. In this type of planning model, the most fundamental question you must 

B. Your topic: Curriculum and Syllabus 

  A curriculum is the guideline of the course/program, covering the knowledge, skill, behavior, and performance that will be taught to and expected of students. In essence, a curriculum is what an educational institution offers to students. It is well-planned by the government and educational institutions for a long duration. Teachers do not make the curriculum, but adhere to its objectives.

  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. 

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.

Teachers must select on a specific learning objective. One topic could have dozens of goals, so make it easier to select them, teachers can use two conceptual tools: taxonomy and task analysis.

1.Taxonomy

This tool divides the broad selection of objectives into 3 domains:

 a. Cognitive Domain

This domain consists of objectives concerned with obtaining knowledge, understanding, and skill, such as teacher B’s goal.

 b. Affective Domain

The aim of this domain is to realize that schools do not exist just to make students smarter as teachers say.

 c. Psychomotor Domain

The purpose of this domain is to involve the development of coordination and physical skills. Physical activity is not limited to physical education, but can also include typing, music, home economics, arts and crafts.

2.   Task Analysis

After you determine the learning objectives, you must know what to do so that students can  achieve the learning objectives. Task analysis helps you break down complex skills into smaller sub-skills, which will make it easier for you to teach students. In this task analysis, the teacher must first make students understand the material, then help them how to apply it, and finally ask them to do it themselves. 

D. Your Learning Activities: Lesson Plan

  Lesson plans focus your efforts on a specific day and class, so it is commonly personalized for each teacher. It needs to be specific enough to give you structure and a solid idea on how you will proceed with your class, but also general enough to give you room to be flexible and adapt to unexpected circumstances (e.g., interruption by other teachers, unruly students, malfunctioning technology facility, students taking too long to finish their assignment).

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.

E. Your Evaluation: Assessment

  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.

  Your quiz, assignment, and test cannot simply require students to be able to correctly answer a question or command; your assessment has to address the question “how can I determine if my students have reached the learning objective?” Both your activities and assessments have to logically connected to your learning objectives. This is called instructional alignment, which is the matching of learning objectives, activities, and assessment (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). You can’t aim for students to be able to create an essay when your learning activities focus on isolated grammar skills. 

How do you make your teaching elements align?

Step 1 : Develop learning objectives

Step 2 : Identify how you would assess if students reached the learning objectives

Step 3 : Design the way you would teach the material so students can reach the learning objectives