How I Build Bond with Students

 

I had the pleasure of working at Mondial Junior High School a national bilingual school that apply the immersion approach to promote students’ English language acquisition since their young age. Mondial Junior High School has good work environment. We have a timeline for each activity of the year. Daily briefings and evaluations help me to stay on track. During the briefing, the principal asked the latest status of the work handled by each teacher and admin, such as the progress of activity plans and administrative work (eg making guidelines, lesson plans, and final grades). After that we will do our own work. After the students went home, we did an evaluation. In the evaluation activities, each teacher and admin reports on work such as teaching and learning activities, the progress of students in class, and problems that may occur that day.

I am also able to ask my fellow teachers questions related to school activities and culture and receive feedback. The variety of learning activities carried out by other teachers became an example and inspiration for me as a new teacher. One of them is Mr. Tri’s way to end the class by giving question to students like post quiz. Equipment for learning is also fulfilled by the school. We can propose tools that support teaching and learning activities such as pen tablets and books. All of these help me to improve overall quality of work.

During 1 year, I have been 7C’s homeroom teacher, teaching biology in online and offline classes. This help me to understand the importance of being ‘present’. I addressed competences such as communication, collaboration. and critical thinking.

One of the competences I can reflect on is being able to communicate with students to identify the best way to bond with them so that lessons can be delivered. I'm happy that the first time I became a teacher I didn't have to meet my students face-to-face because the covid 19 pandemic made us held virtual meetings. Like everyone else I was nervous and I thought teaching them virtually would be an advantage for me. There are 2 out of 8 classes that I can say are cooperative and active. They easily opened the camera and microphone, asking lots of questions so I could check how they understood, any misconceptions formed, and straighten them out. Students are very engaged and my classes can run smoothly and have fun.

The six classes that are not active seem to be due to limited interaction. Limited interaction on online class gradually lead to distancing themselves from the elderly, both their parents and teachers, which affects their conditions negatively. As a teacher I can't control what they actually do during the lesson. it's purely the students' decision to do well in class, let the teacher help them understand the lesson or cut off contact by turning off the camera and microphone.

As Reginald Rose says in 12 Angry Men, “There were eleven votes for guilty. It’s not easy to raise my hand and send a boy off to die without talking about it first.” Most students of today are very critical and open. They boldly convey their ideas and opinions. the supportive environment at Mondial also makes it comfortable for children to do so. Difficulties at the beginning to build activeness and bonding can be resolved, one of them is by communicating and collaborating to create the desired class atmosphere.  I realized through the way they answer quizzes that are too broad, showing they are looking for new material beyond what has been taught. They actively seek information from various sources which sometimes provide broad explanations beyond the basic competences they should understand. I have learned that it is better to continuously ask them in the end of the lesson for making summary and give point for their effort so there will be more students willing to answer. Building bonds and communicating with students has also been done by doing fun activities for making summaries such as the Word Search game. There are hidden words in the word search, which are related to the material.

Communicate with my fellow teachers also give me new experience. With various schedules, fixed to-do lists, and tight deadlines to meet, we had to adapt to each other's schedules and strive for efficient communication. There were times when the task was not clear because this educational environment was new to me. I spent time doing research on how the activity was from the previous year's documentation. Fellow teachers also helped a lot with their fresh ideas.

The second of the competences that I learned to apply is to be able to collaborate with the students. After class discussion, it can be concluded that students want to do interesting things just like playing game with their friends. Jenn says on When Teens Need Their Friends More Than Their Parents, “Teens may cope with stress better when they're around peers, rather than adults”. They are also very familiar with technology so it is not difficult for them to seek knowledge from various sources. During online classes, collaborative activities with friends that can be done are limited to presenting class discussions. However, when students do face-to-face learning, collaborative activities can be carried out more actual. Recently we conducted a simple experimental activity "Contraction and Relaxation in Human Muscles".

Grade 7 students have never done laboratory activities during online learning, so in this first experimental activity I helped in making experimental reports by given the guideline. Students were happy to start discussions and work with their teams. I found that students are quicker to ask questions than to read, so it is important to remind them to read and understand first the references given to answer questions that arise in their minds. This activity is good enough to prepare them before the actual experiment activity.

The last of the competences that I learned to apply is critical thinking. Just like my students that critical and open with new knowledge, I need to open my mind and keep learn for the new way of teaching by using internet (for example to provide models of the joints and quizizz.com to make the quiz). On these days I also need to think how to maintain the bonds that have been established with the students, but also keep the class going according to plan.

From the start I positioned myself as a teacher who could be their friend so they could feel comfortable talking to me. I have struggled to manage class in the first week offline school since many students are like different people. Students who are pretty quiet turn out to be talkative and this makes the class noisy. Sometimes they even tell other things that are not related to learning biology, I listen for a moment, give feedback, and then get back on track. After sharing with Ms. Reta, instead of constantly asking them to be quiet and pay attention, sometimes we can be quiet and pay attention to them first. I do this in class and it's quite effective, they'll quickly realize that I want the class back on track just by watching me stand still and watch them. I found myself become more confident in teaching because I am already familiar with biology in English and I rarely translate Indonesian into English. I will continue study the materials before the class start, so then I can be well-prepared once I am in the class. I have high hope to become a better teacher day by day as part of Mondial Junior High School.

Birgitta Lorraine - Medio May 2022