1. What are the qualities of a good teacher?
Answer:
In my point of view a good teacher at least has to be:
a. Competent and patient.
Because being a good teacher is not as easy as what it looks. Patience is very
important thing in the academic situation. As we know every single student have
different ability when they comprehend or try to understand particular topic in a
subject, so as a good teacher s/he should be able to accommodate all these
students. Some students might be a fast learner and the rest might need more time.
b. Have a good responsibility and be able to understand his/her every single student.
c. Have a good skill of communication
A good teacher should have a good communication skill, and then s/he can deliver
the teaching and learning material in a good explanation and understandable with
confidence. This skill is very important for me as we can found some students did
not like the subject or teacher because of the way how the teacher explaining the
material. Because as we found some classes might be so boring because the
teacher cannot bring a comfortable and fun class due to their communication skill
and ability to make jokes/humor to make the class more life.
Furthermore, we can see some qualification of a good teacher according to
Marge Scherer on his book titled “Keeping Good Teacher”, he writes some
qualities of a good teacher. There are:
a. Willingness to put in the necessary time
b. Love for the age group they teach
c. An effective classroom management style
d. Positive relationships with other adults (teachers, administrators, and parents)
e. Consistent excellence
f. Expert use of instructional methods
g. In- depth content knowledge
h. Steadiness of purpose and teaching personality
2. How can I motivate my students?
Answer:
We have to find good and appropriate way how to motivate the students. The
motivation can be internal or external.
For the internal motivation, of course it has to be from the students themselves how
they build their own motivation. But to increase students internal motivation in
learning, as a teacher we have to support them from external motivation. There are
some possible ways we can do to motivate the students:
1. We can give and explain to the students the objective and goals of the learning
process. Thus, teacher should be able to set a good learning objective and goals as
the student’s needs. Teacher can get some information by doing students’ needs
analysis first.
2. In the teaching and learning process, teacher can give a reward for the students to
increase their learning motivation. By this way, not only the students who get the
rewards will be motivate but also the other students that not get the rewards yet,
they will motivated to learn more than they can achieved a better and more
knowledge. (A.M. Sadirman, 2005)
3. In some situations and depend on the level of the students, teacher can use some
games as a supporting tools in teaching and learning process. In this way of
teaching, students probably will find the activity is fun and will be motivated to
take part in the class activity,
4. Others way to increase students motivation in learning as stated by A.M. Sadirman
(2005) is give the evaluation of the students learning process. By giving
evaluation, the students will be having motivation to study harder. Moreover,
when the students get a better score or more understanding of the material, for
sure the students will try to maintain their achievement or even increase it.
5. Teacher can give complement to the students as well when they get a good score
or done their assignment well to increase their learning motivation. Complement
is a positive reinforcement and gives a good motivation for students. But it needs
to be concern that complement has to be given in an appropriate situation.
3. What is a good student?
Answer:
According Donald E. Simanek (1997), a good student is a student who has a good
attitude, good academic skills, high of awareness, and accomplishment.
So a good students need to have some require criteria such as, have a good self
discipline, initiative, open minded, have a critical habit of mind, perceptiveness,
objectivity, and humility. It can be conclude that, to be a good student it is not just
about having good academic skills, but a good personality took an important part as
well.
4. How important is collaborative learning?
Answer:
a. Developing social skills
Collaborative learning makes students with different backgrounds, race, or
upbringing, to work together. That maybe would not be possible if it were not for
collaborative learning. They are able to hear different opinions and learn more
about different cultures. Collaborative learning is ideal for students that have
difficulties in a social setting
b. Learn from peers
Different students can have different answers, idea, or opinion and students can
learn new things from one another, but also understand different perspective.
c. Build trust
Students can work together without trusting each other, but for an effective
collaboration and to reach a common goal, they need to learn to trust each other.
d. Gain confidence
Collaborative learning can help shy students express themselves.
