Confident

After six weeks of teaching at SMK (L) Bukit Bintang, I feel more confident to face the boys in class. Before this, my lecturer and mentor told me that I am a soft spoken person and therefore the boys could easily lost their focus and if my voice is not loud enough I may face difficulties in controlling the class. I was worried about my method and my voice. I feared that they might not understand what I am going to teach them and the worst problem is they can’t hear me. I don’t like to scream. So, every time I walk into the classroom, I’ll ask all the boys to sit in front and let the back seats empty. Some of them even have to share tables.

For the teaching content, I am now preparing the boys for exam. My mentor told us (Fahmi and I) to focus on the literature component. So from week six until the exam, I will focus on ‘The River’, ‘Flipping Fantastic’ and ‘Mr. Nobody’. My aim is to get the boys to answer at least 70% of the exam questions correctly. I gave them worksheets and asked them to discuss and presents the findings of discussion. So far, they are doing quite well. As for their vocabulary, I asked them to write every word they don’t understand at the back of their books and find the meaning in the dictionary. I will ask them about the words in the next class.

As a whole, the boys are more active in classroom. They tried to answer my questions more frequently and I can see that a lot more students are volunteering to do the reading and presenting part. I can see that they are more confident and they are trying to really focus on the lesson. This contributes to my confidence. I always knew that I can make them study; I just need to find the right way.