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.