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Where should I learn how to teach the Indonesian way?
Without a doubt, it should be from my mentor, Sir Affandi Amat Salim, S.Pd. He is a mathematics teacher in SMP Lab School UNTAD Palu. Currently, he teaches the 7th grade.
The SeaTeacher International Practicum project follows this schedule: week 1 has is devoted for observations, week 2 and 3 is for teacher assistantship and actual teaching, and week 4 is for reflection. On the first week of the program, I observed Sir Affandi's classes (7A, 7B, 7C, and 7D) where he taught indirect proportion on the first meeting, then scaling real distances from distances on the map.
Sir Affandi teaches mathematics using Bahasa Indonesia. As a matter of fact, all the subjects taught in school are delivered in Bahasa Indonesia except English. As I observed his classes, I don't really get to understand everything Sir Affandi is teaching in class. I can only pick things up from what he writes on the board, say, the formula, and trying to make sense of what each word that he writes.
What I could get from my mentor is that he also follows the basic events of instruction like preliminaries (prayer, checking of attendance, recapitulation, etc.), presentation of objectives, discussion, drills, and synthesis. He follows a learner-centered approach where he allows students to recall what they already know and use it to actively participate in the discussion. He gives drills after the lesson to allow students to practice what they have learned so far and put it in context with real-life problems, which I think is remarkable. Then, he lets the students answer the questions on the board for them to explain so that learning would take place from their peers. From that, he uses the problem-based learning (PBL) and cooperative learning strategies.
Based on the sample lesson plan he gave me, although he did not give me a lesson plan for the topics he taught, he still follows the same framework for teaching the lesson. He begins with observing, then asking, information gathering, information processing, and finally, communicating. These steps are somewhat new to me (or probably I have encountered these already but maybe it uses different names of the steps) but from observation, I didn't see some of the steps like observation and asking questions because at the start of the session he already gave out the information necessary for the drills he was going to give. Furthermore, on how the lesson plan was written, although it is a semi-detailed lesson plan, the way the learning activities are narrated are too vague to imagine anything from what should be happening in the classroom. Unlike lesson plans in the Philippines, we specify everything, whether it is a semi-detailed or detailed lesson plan, so that our plans for the class are fully laid-out.
On the learning objectives, I am not sure if it was a mistake in translation or if it was really the case but the learning objectives (for the sample lesson plan given to me) were very vague. Checking one-by-one, it doesn't follow the guidelines for writing learning objectives known as SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-bound). Most of the objectives were not specific nor measurable, making it difficult to assess at the end. What burdens me is that if there is trouble in writing learning objectives, there is almost a certainty that there is trouble in preparing the lesson and the assessment prompts since everything is based on the objectives.
Despite all that, I still have to commend my mentor, Sir Affandi, for being an effective teacher. I can see from the faces of my students that they can get the lesson in a manner that is enjoyable for them. Some students even say that he is their favorite teacher. Looking at the most important aspect of it, he is sure that his students learn a lot from his class -- the thing that matters the most.