By Yitzha Sarwono
First time is fresh, first time gives new flesh. Experience makes you rich and experience sets you free. As an adventurer, I’ve always loved to be given a chance to embrace something new. I must say I was getting rusty because I didn’t do anything challenging for quite a while.
The opportunity came along in the form of teacher training. I should say that training teachers wasn’t something entirely new for me since I’d done it a few times before, though on a smaller scale and only for teachers in my school. But this was something I considered out of my league: not only did I get the chance to train teachers from a different school, but I also had to train Maths and Science teachers!
Let me start from the beginning. Last February I was offered a chance to provide training for ENET (English for Non English Teachers). I was in a team of 7 trainers who came from different backgrounds and teaching fields. Our client was one of the most popular private schools in Indonesia and the program involved 80 hours of training. The goal was for the Maths and Science teachers to feel confident in teaching their subjects using full English in the classroom.
Before we could jump into training, we had to be trained, too, because none of us actually knew much about Maths or Science curriculum. We had to embrace CLIL (content language integrated learning) and start by learning the school’s material. We had to learn about things like phylum cordata, vertebrate, decimal system, 2 digits subtraction pattern, and many others. Learning this material was fun but trying to build a lesson in such a way that the teachers would be able to teach students using simple and comprehensible language was something else. Aside from learning the subjects, we were also trained on how to organize the program. As it was 80-hour training, we divided it into blocks of 3 sessions each day, 2 hours per session. In practice that meant that every time we got to the classroom we were set to teach for 6 hours, which was really intense! The length of the course could be demotivating for the participants and there was so much content to cover, so the preparation had to be thorough and handled well. Thankfully, we had an awesome team who would go extra miles in preparing the material for all the trainers. As our schedule consisted of long sessions, we had to make sure that we would provide engaging activities for all the trainees to stay motivated and actively participating throughout the program.
Every trainer was also taking part in designing lesson plans and the teacher’s guide. We spent a lot of time doing it, and since some of us lived in other cities, there were a lot of late nights, whatsapp sessions, dozens of emails, and revision here and there. We used all the tools we could to provide the healthy environment for all teachers to grow. From Power Point and flashcards to online learning sessions – we did it all.
I was very nervous before I started my first session because not only some of the teachers were more experienced than me in teaching, but I was also afraid that I wouldn’t answer their questions or fulfill their needs. Another concern I had was how I’d get through 6 hours of training time without anyone yawning in my class! Luckily, everyone in my team was very supportive (and the head of trainers reminded me to always speak slowly and look a bit more mature).
I had the privilege to teach three groups in three locations of our training, but I spent most of the training with one group in North Jakarta Area. There were 22 teachers in my group and everyone was very keen on learning. They embraced all the activities joyfully! Even the simplest activity, such as interviewing your friends, could turn out to be full of laughter. We did a lot of one-on-one Q&A sessions to work on their spelling ability and created engaging and fun role play cards with famous characters like Captain America, Thor and Indonesian famous comedians. We played with emotions, talking to each other in angry or laughing voices. One example of a role play we had was a bunny and sloth interview that I came up with, where one teacher would be the bunny and ask questions really quickly and the other would act as the sloth and mimic the slow characteristic of the animal. My group had a blast and the 6 hours of training went by like a breeze, leaving everyone happy and excited!
The CLIL session became my favorite, even if I was terrified of it at first. I soon found out that nobody in the classroom would judge me for not being a master of Maths and Science. These teachers were already full of ideas on how to teach their students. All they needed was some confidence and language means to use in their class to teach what they already knew so well. And that’s what we provided to them. After a couple of sessions, both the teachers in my group and I grew more confident as we had built trust towards each other.
When the 80 hours came to an end, it was a bitter-sweet moment for me. I was probably more happy than my trainees, because I completed all sessions and also gained a lot from the experience itself. Besides, it meant no more working at night, cutting papers, making slides, and doing assessment. But I was also sad that I had to say goodbye to my groups who I considered to be more than just participants in my class but rather my colleagues.
This experience has taught me a lot and I do hope that in the future I’ll get another chance like this. For that I must and I am willing to work harder. New experience? I will have my arms wide open for you!
