What kind of teacher do I want to be: A Reflection

During my school time, being a teacher is never part of my dream job.

In my shallow point of view, being a teacher is ‘not me’ at all. I feel like teaching is not something that I can and will do. I always respect teacher profession and somehow I see that being a teacher is fun; reflect to all teacher that I ever met they seems have enjoyable life and financially stable, yet once again I say that It’s never be part of my dream job. That is my point of view of the teacher profession until one day, one of my friends needed my help to explain English grammar. With my private-English-course notes, I explained it well until my friend understood. From this little thing, I started to find joy in teaching. There is something indescribable  in sharing knowledge. That one friend said that I have potential in being a teacher. Yes, my perspective changed. 

Specifically, I have that patience to face different kinds of people. As an introvert, I have good intrapersonal skills. I will enjoy reaching out to my students using a personal approach. However, sometimes I find it hard to explain things well. I feel like I really need to improve my public speaking skills to be a better educator. Time management is also my weakness. Yet so far, anxiety to start to teach in the real classroom is the biggest challenge for me. Meeting various students with various cultures will drain my energy. Fortunately, I believe that culture differences affect teaching and learning and this is something that I need to understand. About the kind of teacher I want to be, I always adore those teachers who are close to their students personally. That is why I want to be that kind of teacher too; a reliable teacher. 

Classroom observation helps me become the kind of teacher I want to be. I experienced four different schools for SEP. In the first year of SEP, I observed students and teachers. Along with it, I also observed the school. During the second year of SEP, I became a teacher assistant. But still, I am the observer.  Two of the schools that I observed were public schools, the two others are private schools. I got such significant differences between these two kinds of schools. I found that in private school, the teachers are more reliable than the teachers in public school. In private school, the interactions between the teacher and student are more personal. Even each classroom has more than one teacher so the students have more teachers to rely on. It is different with the public school that I have observed. The teacher-student interaction is more formal. Both the teachers in public and private schools that I have observed connect the real life experiences to the materials developed. They usually use a direct approach to connect it in the beginning of the lesson. To incorporate the cultural perspective, the teachers will start by reflecting to themselves first. These experiences challenge me to become a reliable teacher no matter the condition.