I Putu Arik Budiarsana

serindingindah@gmail.com

This Monday, we were so lucky to get a chance to have a visit to Children Houseat Jimbaran. It is a pre-school which offers English as the main and the only communication medium used in the classroom. We had a very rare chance to have a look at activities both in the classroom and outside the classroom, to observe the classroom materials, to get known of the lesson plan and syllabus, and also to have a discussion with the teachers.

The activities arranged both in the classroom and outside the classroom are found so different from the activities conducted in the other pre-schools, especially the state ones. The teaching-learning process is conducted using the syllabus that the teachers and staffs themselves develop.So, it has a little possibility to be similar as other school. The syllabus, lesson plan, and the activities are developed on the purpose of nurturing children’s nature. The nature or the environment becomes the main concern of the schools. Children are persuaded to respect and save the nature throughout the activities planned by the school staffs.

To be effective in nurturing children’s nature, the children are taught with two teachers who each of them should play different roles in the classroom. One should teach the materials and another should maintain the behavior of the children. The purpose of the teacher assistant during the teaching and learning is to avoid the teaching-learning disruption. Take for example when there is a child crying. To avoid other children for being bothered, the teacher assistant will try to make that child calm and avoid the spread to the other children.
Furthermore, in nurturing children, the school and the teachers always keep contacting the parents. It is for the better development of the children since the children are not only at schools for the whole day. Parents are expected to know what the children’s development at school. Teachers usually keep reporting the children’s lack and try to solve it together. The school usually provides a parent-teacher meeting to talk about it at the end of each semester. Parents are usually very helpful to improve the children’s achievement.
From theinformation above, I think being teacher, if it is done seriously, is not easy as I think before.Besides transferring knowledge, the teacher should be able to communicate well with the parents. The teacher should record the children’s development and report it in the certain time that is agreed.
Teacher needs also to concern on how the children are nurtured, to persuade the children to be aware of the nature and environment. Teacher must be carefully aware with the activities conducted. Mistakes are likely to emerge in threating the students’ attitude towards the safe nature and environment. I clarify this by illustrating the example of mistake that I got from the discussion in the Children House. To celebrate the independence day of Indonesia, one dayin August, the schools held a competition of ell trolling. The game is a sort of game that is very well-known within the children since it is common to be done somewhere within the society. However, an E-mail came from a parent who complained the competition. It is since the parent was so difficult explaining the competition in which the children thought it was cruel. The game ignored the feeling of the eel which the children made fun during the competition. Thus, the teacher should plan the activity carefully in the adjustment with the mission of the school themselves; it is to develop the students’ nature and to keep the nature or environment.