I just started my practicum at SMK Agama Kedah, Alor Setar last Monday, for a period of 10 weeks.
And thank Allah, the first week had gone so fast. So far I do love teaching and being a teacher so much and to be honest, alhamdulillah there's no stress and pressure at all for the first week as I enjoyed every single thing I did in school, except for I have to wake up as early as 5.20 am every morning, go to school at 6.30 am to ensure that I arrive there no later than 7.10 am and come back at 6 pm, ALMOST everyday!
The teachers are all friendly and helpful and always ready to guide me and my partner, Anis throughout our practicum. The students, you can guess how's the nature of SMKA students right? Alhamdulillah for everything, Allah had made my journey so smooth and easy.
I got 11 periods of lesson per week, 8 for Form 4 Chemistry and 3 for Form 2 Kemahiran Hidup. Luckily the Kemahiran Hidup teachers understands well on how shallow my knowledge and skills in this subject, so they allow me and Anis to choose which chapters we prefer to carry on throughout this stage, yeayyy! So far I chose a few chapters - Technical Drawings, Cooking, Electronics, Decorative Plants and Commerce - well, I try to avoid heavy practical classes like sewing or carpenting, so sorry I have NO talent at all to do those things!
Apart from teaching, I also have to handle Kadet Remaja Sekolah, Rumah Utarid (red!) and Environmental Society. Plus all the meetings that teachers must attend! And involve in any school events - frankly speaking, I only have a day free this weekend - there'll be a seminar organized by PIBG this Saturday 12/2 and I am the one in the list of in-charge - AJK Pentas!
This week I had 2 class relief - form 1 and form 4. It's a bit challenging to deal with upper form students compared to lower one. Form 4 students were quite passive, refused to volunteer if they asked to do so and preferred to whisper among themselves when it came to question and answer session. Form 1, totally different. Everyone wanted to volunteer and took part and loved to voice out. I did the same ice-breaking activity for both classes with some alterations depends on their level. For form 4 students, I asked them to share their aims they want to achieve in life while for form 1, I narrowed the aims - what do they want to achieve during the 5 years period in secondary school. Alangkah sejuknya hati bila hampir semua tulis mahu hafal al-Quran sebanyak mungkin dan mahu kuasai Bahasa Arab! Mengenangkan kembali masa-masa kejahilan dan kegangsteran saya semasa menjadi pelajar SMKA dulu, oh malunya!!!
I'll start my first lesson this Sunday morning, right after assembly. We'll see what will happen to my students if they reach lab more than 5 minutes later than they should be there, hehehe. And yesterday, one of the Add-Maths teacher asked us to help him to facilitate Form 5 students during their extra-class, which were organized for those who scored D and below. In the first place, I refused to help for few reasons - I forgot almost everything, I don't want to put students in total confusion and I might not be the right person - I used to fail Add-Maths few times when I was in school. But, the teacher still begged for our help. So I brought back few Add-Maths revision books and tried to restudy and solve all the questions. It's tiring to finish the revision even only for Chapter 1 questions.
But it went quite well alhamdulillah. At least, we still gave our help to the students, even only for 2-3 questions with 4-5 times of repeating the explanation. Tak sampai hati tengok muka pelajar yang begitu mengharap, sekarang saya mengerti erti pengorbanan dalam konteks seorang guru.
Penat memang tak terhitung, tapi, bak kata Anis sewaktu dalam perjalanan pulang dari sekolah tempohari - pilih mahu buat kerja Lillah (kerana Allah) atau lelah (penat yang sia-sia).
OK, have to pen-off now. Loads of work still in queue. More stories and photos will be updated soon insyaAllah, depending on my free time!
