Teachers trained to act, think outside the box

Teachers trained to act, think outside the box

Tantri Yuliandini, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

When teachers become caught up in routine and fail to think
outside the box, they should not be surprised if their students
also lose interest in classroom activities.

Getting creative in the classroom is the main objective for
teachers attending a two-week teacher's training course as part
of Sampoerna Foundation's School Quality Improvement Program
(SQIP).

"Students should feel they have ownership of the lessons to
get them to be more involved," educationist Thana Thaver from
Singapore's National Institute of Education (NIE) said.

Thaver is one of the trainers employed by the foundation to
teach SQIP teachers how to promote effective and engaged learning
in the classroom.

According to Satria Dharma, Sampoerna Foundation's education
consultant, however, it is not that teachers are unaware their
method is boring students, but rather that they do not know how
to make lessons more interesting.

"Teachers were never introduced to new methodology in
teaching, and once they entered the classroom, there was never a
regular upgrading of their teaching ability," Satria, who is the
chairman for the Balikpapan Board of Education, said.

SQIP was first launched in March of this year to provide
schools with high quality training for their teachers and
principals in order to improve the school's teaching and
management quality.

Beginning with three state high schools in Depok, Sekayu in
South Sumatra, and Balikpapan in East Kalimantan, it is expected
that by 2010 some 33 state high schools across Indonesia will
have participated in the program.

The first five days of the training deal with pedagogy, while
the next five days are reserved for improving the skills of
English and mathematics teachers.

"The pedagogy module is aimed at understanding factors that
influence learning and academic achievement, identifying
strengths and weaknesses in student's learning and study
practices and attitudes, and catering to the individual needs of
students," Thaver said.

One way to increase student participation, she said, was to
elicit answers that encourage high-level thinking.

"Teachers must know how to ask questions, not only knowledge-
based questions such as true or false, but also analysis
questions, clarification questions, probing questions," Thaver
said.

And making students feel they own the lesson, means teachers
should always give high priority to student's suggestions and
input within the lesson.

As much as possible, Thaver tries to infuse the training
sessions directly with the methods she is teaching, so
participants can witness her theories in practice.

"The theories are nothing new, but it helps that they are
directly put into practice, so that in turn we can practice them
in our classrooms," Esther Siswanti, an English teacher at State
High School No. 2 in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan, said.

One of the challenges of the program, is, of course,
encouraging teachers to keep on using the knowledge gained in
training in their own classrooms, and not reverting back to their
old methods.

"We have to tickle teacher's conscience. Raise their awareness
so that if they go back to their old teaching methods, they will
feel guilty," Thaver said.

And while Esther's 48-student classroom in Balikpapan may not
be ideal for activities that require much moving around, she was
excited enough to want to immediately apply her
newfound knowledge.

"It's just such a shame that I'm going to retire soon, when
what I want after this training is to continue practicing what's
been taught here," the 52-year-old woman said.