The Truth: What Teacher Actually Do

PETA Second Reflective Journal

Becoming a teacher isn’t as simple as it may seem form outside, even mostly teacher looks like a person who do his/her job repeatedly so teacher could do all his/her job without thinking anymore. It can be done automatically like how robot works. Honestly although I am one of teacher candidate I ever thought about teacher profession in that way. I thought teacher is one of most “loose” job in this world. Because all teacher has to do is enter one class to another for teaching about the same topic. I assumed that teacher also doesn’t have to think about examination like student do. Because teacher is the one who can give examination or quiz as free as he/she wants.

But then I realized that my previous thought is wrong after I attended PETA second meeting. Through that session I learn about so many things I never knew before like fact that 80% of teacher’s time is used for class preparation meanwhile the rest is for teaching, assessing and so on. Beside than that I also learn about what is thematic learning, what is Bloom taxonomy and last but not least I get to know about how develop a lesson plan. I will just talk about thematic learning, Bloom taxonomy and how to develop lesson plan one by one before I go to the main topic about why I say become a teacher isn’t as simple as it may seem.

First about thematic learning, today I watched about demonstration of thematic learning through a video. For that video I knew that thematic learning is one of teaching method which integrated more than one subject in school at the same time. So there is no clear constraint from one lesson to another in the classroom. I think this teaching method is effective and ineffective in the same time. It is effective because it can engage students into classroom activities and because it can make student more understand in subjects which are related to each other. But on the other hand is ineffective because with this method, explanation for each subject will be done briefly. Personally I think thematic learning is only appropriate for early stage of school and isn’t good if it is used for higher stage of school.

Second is about Bloom taxonomy, I learn that it is a framework teacher usually use as standard for making assessment. In Bloom taxonomy there are six levels of cognitive difficulties:

1. Remembering

2. Understanding

3. Applying

4. Analyzing

5. Evaluating

6. Creating 

Teacher can look up to this taxonomy when they want to make a question, the higher the number, level of cognitive difficulty will increase as well.

Third thing I learn from PETA second session is how to develop lesson plan. I learn that to make a good lesson plan teacher should avoid twin sin, there are:

1. Making student busy with unclear activity

2. Teacher just teaches, gives exam and prays for the best result.

Last I will talk about why it is not easy to become a teacher. Reflect on my experience today I learn that teacher cannot teach in class without any preparation before because teacher should master about what they will teach and should know about how to transfer the material to the student. Because of that teacher need a lesson plan to become a guideline for teacher. In this session I have tried to make a simple lesson plan and I realize that it not easy because I should avoid two sin in designing lesson plan and I also need to consider Bloom taxonomy when I design the assessment. I need about 30 until 45 “tough” minutes for designing a simple lesson plan and still it is not perfect yet. What scary me the most is in the future I as a teacher should design a good lesson plan before I teach which mean it could be 3 times at one week!! But well… I guess I don’t have other choice. This is challenge I should take in other to become a new generation of teacher.