The Purposes of Practicum

"Learning has a purpose to make a person be a human" 

-Anonymous-

    
     As stated clearly by SEAMEO, this teaching program aims to provide opportunity for pre-service student teachers from universities in Southeast Asia to have teaching experiences (Practicum) in school in other countries especially in Southeast of Asia. As the participant from Ganesha University of Education I was glad to be given this chance to develop my 4 competencies regarding to the teaching skill.

     A. The practicum improving my pedagogical competence, pedagogical competence is something that relate with teacher’s competence in managing the whole teaching activities including designing the teaching plan, and ability to observe the process in the class in order to be able to conduct an evaluation and giving feedback. The practicum that I have conducted was helping me to improve my pedagogical sense, started with how conducted good observation, I learned to be good observer to find out my students’ needs, students characteristics so I could make appropriate suitable based on the observation done. My evaluating skill also was developed well since I conducted my practicum there, how I was done correct evaluation including the steeps conducted on it.

     B. Second purpose is improving my professional competence. I realized since Philippines are using English as second language, the material given for the students were totally different. This situation just made me to work and master the material harder. I learnt something new, it was not just only mastering the context on the textbook, but how to deliver it fluently and meaningfully to make my students learn many more perspective.

     C. Third purpose is personal competence. This competence is about teacher self-improvement. The teaching practicum was helping me to be mature teacher. I have done everything individually and it means I was far away from home; I have to control my personal life and teaching practicum independently, I tried not to disturb any others because it was my responsibility to grow up as a good teacher. Being stable and wise during the program had finally made me able to apply it on my teaching experience. Now I become more independent to manage myself in front of my teacher as a good role of teacher.

      D. Third purpose is social competence. A human is a social creature, also the same with a teacher. A teacher’s duty is educate his/her students by applying social communicate-approach. I mostly giving instruction in spoken the interaction that I made between students and I was important to make them easily understand and made them respect me as their teacher. I have faced many faces in my life they are the same but the cultures and personalities were different. I realized Indonesia and Philippines have different culture and people personalities, and again I learned something new regarding with social communication and interaction. It was really needed to have good adapting skill, the process has made me response the environment carefully. This competence also allowed me to learn the students’ psychology faster included its treatments.

            I can conclude that this program totally has a purpose to help developing practical students especially their teaching ability because it will help them to face the real classroom activity which could be wilder than with what they have faced before.                 

(Grade 11 having classroom activity)