Day 8: Wednesday, October 16, 2024

First Observation Day in Araullo High School, Manila 

    On October 16, 2024, we were deployed to one of the public schools in Manila near to PNU. It was Araullo high school. Firstly, we woke up early in the morning and had our breakfast together in Karin and Kinan's room. We had sardines and rice for breakfast. Then, at around 11 AM, we went to Araullo high school together with ma'am Vicky, one of the lecturers from PNU. We wore one of traditional clothes from our Palembang city which was called Jumputan. We went to the school by Jeepney, the local transportation in the Philippines. After we arrived, we were separated to meet our coordinating teachers who would help us for teaching practice in the school. Every student had a coordinating teacher. I got ma'am Grace as my coordinating teacher. For the first time I met her, it was so nice because she was young, fashionable, and looked fresh all the time. Then, I talked about the objectives that I should reach in doing the teaching practice. After that, we came to an agreement that I would teach her classes in the fourth week and my final teaching demo would be on November 5, 2024. Then, I asked a lot of questions about the teaching and learning activity in the Philippines. At first, I was shocked knowing that in a day, I would be teaching five different classes. Oh yes, I was going to teach junior high school students. I also knew that in the public school, it only took 45 minutes per subject. So, I need to be ready to teach them for 45 minutes per class and per meeting. Well, it was quite different with Indonesia. In Indonesia, the teaching and learning activity was up to 60 minutes. Then, after discussing about the teaching and learning activity, I did observation with two different classes taught by ma'am Grace. Ma'am Grace introduced me to her classes. Her students were very nice and friendly because they respected me as a new visitor by greeting me. When I did the observation, I analyzed that the teaching and learning activity in the public school was teacher-centered, where it focused more on how teacher delivered the lesson to the students. The classroom also used technological tools like TV to present the slides that had been made by the teacher. They also still used book. On this day, the students learned about English literatures, which were poetry and prose. It was quite different with Indonesia because in Indonesia, there were not many schools which taught the literature. In Indonesia, it mostly focused on students' English skills, such as, writing, listening, speaking, and reading. At 2 o'clock, I had done observing the class. So, I was allowed to go home. Then, I went to the school gate where my friends waited for me. After that, we went to our dorm to perform prayers. Since we had not had our lunch yet, we decided to go to SM mall to have our lunch at McDonalds. We ordered chicken and rice. After that, we did shopping again. After shopping, we went back to our dorm to have a rest. And at night, we had our dinner together in the dorm and made ourselves ready to sleep :)