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Teacher learn new tricks at seminar
For two Acehnese teachers, Desti Purnama and Nurul Chotimah, a two-day teachers seminar that ended in Jakarta on Friday was all about gaining new experience and learning new teaching techniques
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or two Acehnese teachers, Desti Purnama and Nurul Chotimah, a two-day teachers seminar that ended in Jakarta on Friday was all about gaining new experience and learning new teaching techniques.
Desti, a biology teacher from state Islamic high school MAN Bireuen, told The Jakarta Post that her favorite session was a discussion themed "A Good Teacher Inspires".
"I had never known that we teachers could inspire our students. And I had never known, either, that we could teach students in a flexible way.
"All this time we've been too strict with our students, telling them to study only in classrooms or in the library, while it appears that studying can be done anywhere, including outdoors," Desti said.
She said she wanted to apply the new things she had learned in the classroom as soon as she returned to Aceh.
The seminar offered knowledge to other participating teachers from a private school in Palembang, South Sumatra, offering tips for improving teaching methods and learning activities.
School director Emil Rosmali said that before meeting fellow teachers from other regions in the country, his teachers had thought they were doing their best and that they did not need any help improving their teaching methods.
For Sri Lestari, teacher coordinator of an elite private school in East Jakarta, the forum was about learning how to make use of technology in the classroom.
"This seminar has taught me how to integrate information communication technology (ICT) with what we have learned in the classroom," she said, adding that her school already applied most of the other methods taught in the seminar.
The Teacher's Congress, organized by the Sampoerna Foundation Teacher's Institute, was first held in 2006. As in the previous events, this year's forum was attended by 1,000 teachers and other educational workers from many regions throughout Indonesia.
About half of the participants paid between Rp 400,000 (US$33) and Rp 600,000 to attend the event, while others were sponsored by private companies or local education agencies.
Teacher's Institute director Kenneth J. Cock said the forum was intended to teach the participants how Indonesia could "fit in within the whole world".
Cock said teachers needed to understand, for example, how the U.S.-led financial crisis affected the rest of the world, how ICT brought people closer together and that although Indonesia was going globalized, teachers should help preserve the "local, fantastic cultures".
