PETA 1st Reflective Journal

Tuesday 19 September 2011 was my first time attending PETA course. Once I heard about “Principle of Effective Teaching and Assessment” I think that I will learn about the basic principle to become an effective teacher and how to assess student fairly and it seems like my assumption is right until now. I hope this course will help me for my future preparation as teacher. Because I always think that become an effective teacher and assess student fairly aren’t easy thing to do. I reflect it from my own experience since I was in my first grade in my elementary school. I have met so many teachers with different teaching styles and also different assessment styles.

I ever like some of my teacher so much and on the other hand I also ever dislike some of my teachers. Mostly I like certain teachers because they good in mastery the materials they teach, they can lead the class for running smoothly, they show their concern toward students and they also really good in dealing with all students including students which labeled as ‘troubled students’. On the other side I dislike certain teachers because I think they do have focus in teaching and do not have interest in their students. Some of them have bad habits like coming late to the class, absent without informing the class coordinator and talk too much about other things but the materials they should give to students. So I feel like I do not get anything from their class.

All of those experiences help me to figure out about characteristic of effective teacher and effective teaching.
I assume that an effective teacher is:

1. Teacher who prepares herself/ himself before teaching (make lesson plan, mastery the material, prepare all things needed like post-it or something like that)
2. Teacher who good at time management (stick on the schedule, she/he doesn’t come late nor ended the class late)
3. Teacher who good at classroom management ( he/she already make an agreement with the class, he/she gives attention fairly to all students, he/she knows how to maintain students attention to be engage into learning process)
4. Teacher who knows using ICT tools wisely.

Meanwhile I think that effective teaching is:

1. Teaching which makes almost all students understands about the materials.
2. Teaching which meet teaching’s objectives like what have been planned in lesson plan.

But aside from that, I still confuse about whether a teacher who could lit up classroom’s atmosphere is automatically categorized as an effective teacher or not? And whether a teaching method which could make students enjoy learning and teaching process will automatically categorized as effective teaching?
That my entire reflective journal for now hopefully I could be an effective teacher in the future and I could get better understanding about PETA course.