We’re not given a single task or activity to do today but we still have to go to school. So we made use of the time to finish our lesson plans and some of us had some rest since we haven’t had enough sleep for a couple of days. We spent our morning in the faculty room, squeezing our brains and trying to come up with the best way to deliver our discussion and finish all the paper works for here in Indonesia and for our online submission deadlines in the Philippines. It’s a lot to work on but we SHOULD be able to manage it because as future educators, our brains are our business. We should be used to thinking a lot every single day and beat every requirement we are given. Anyways, after eating our lunch (which is provided by the school by the way; terima kasih for your generosity!), our supervising teacher came in and asked us (Ally, Arvin, and me; Grade 7 teachers) to come with her. She introduced us to our would-be students. We first went to Arvin’s class and stated our names. We’ve come to know that the students here are divided into sections according to their gender. Girls and boys aren’t allowed to be in the same room. Even the stairs are assigned to a certain gender so they wouldn’t come together. Going back to our introduction, once again, the students started cheering when it was my turn to speak! I don’t really know what’s with these kids but thank you for that, haha! I told Arvin to ask their interest so he went on and asked. He could make use of this information to get them interested in his discussion. When he’s done, we went on to the class I’m assigned to teach. Arvin was assigned to an all boys class, while I was assigned to an all girls class. I also asked their interests together with their names. Unlike the boys who mostly like sports and active hobbies, girls are mostly into passive hobbies like writing, drawing, singing, reading, and the like. They’re too sweet and innocent unlike the boys who are active. I would like to experience both types of sections for me to train myself to be versatile with what kind of students I will be having. Nonetheless, I am still grateful to work with the sections assigned to me and I’m looking forward to teach them and hoping that I could learn from them and with them.
3:30 PM strikes and our service have arrived. Before dropping us on our dormitories, we stopped by J.Co and bought doughnuts. Afterwards, we went to Starbucks and let my rich classmate buy their Indonesia-designed tumblers. Fortunately, Ally bought an SB card and FOUR tumblers so she got to have 4 free drinks. I just got treated!!!! Remembering that it’s our beloved professor’s birthday today, we took a video outside of the café greeting him a happy, happy birthday. We immediately went back to the car because if we went past 5PM, we have to pay the driver. He, then, dropped us on our dormitories and just when we thought we can all rest quietly, SURPRISE! Miel announced that we were asked to teach tomorrow! So we all went to our favorite restaurant, Al-Nazwa Café, to eat our dinner there and finish all our lesson plans and PowerPoint presentations. Since some of us don’t have a scheduled class for tomorrow, we helped those who have. Circumstances like these tests how ready and flexible we are as teachers. They would know how we would handle such unexpected events and when it does happen, we should always be ready. The administrators told us that the students will have a lot of activity next week in celebration of their Independence Day and the following week would also be a holiday because of the Eid al-Adha. They’re afraid we won’t complete our 20-hour minimum requirement of teaching so they let us teach tomorrow and on Friday. We head back home before the café closes. I just hope they could pull off a crammed teaching instruction, and wish them the best!