Attending an Elective Course

Rene Karlos C. Bernardo
Nov 3, 2023
2 min read

It was Friday, 9:00AM that I need to go to FKIP since I need to attend an elective course about teaching Physics in English. When I entered the room, I saw a lot of students from different year level sitting in their chairs. Bu Nurul, the facilitator during that time introduced me to her students before explaining the use a new method of teaching to her students. In this case using cold water and warm water to teach the flow of heat. When I first saw this, I remember the same demonstration that I did to my students back in the Philippines. I was teaching Earth Science as my subject, and during that time the topic that I will be teaching to them is "Convection Current." I'm the type of teacher that use a lot of demonstration to teach, since I believe that the students will understand the concept through seeing it happening in real time. Hence, to demonstrate the convection flow, I bought a large container, food coloring, electric kettle and a plastic cup in my class. My students absolutely loved it!

Going back, the class is divided into smaller groups. We are tasked to demonstrate the flow of heat using the materials that provided to us. I was group with some students from 2nd year, if I remember correctly. They are having difficult time in sharing their thoughts to me since they are not fluent in speaking in English. Instead, they use Google Translate to tell them their thoughts and opinions, which kind of reminds me of Regina when I first met her. The good thing is that Safia, one of Bu Nurul's assistant is good in speaking in English so she was able to help us in talking. After the short group discussion, my groupmates decided me to present the experiment to the class by discussing the flow of heat.

I was then attended my final English course of Sir Rams. During my stay here in UNMUL, Enthel and I attended Sir Rams' class a couple of time before. We are first asked to join one after our ESIC presentation because we speak in English. When we entered the class, I find him a very fun, kind and intelligent teacher. He always try to tell jokes a couple of times and conduct different games to make the class lively. For me, his English class is a great way to learn some Indonesian words, and in fact, Sir Rams provided different handouts that are both in Bahasa Indonesia and English for us to learn! He is so sweet and nice! I hope I can see him again when I go return back to Samarinda.