BTL is Not Just for the 5 Core Subjects

EVEN THOUGH DBE3 is ending in October 2011 teachers, from both partner and non-partner schools, have not stopped using Better Teaching and Learning (BTL) in their schools. Initially, the BTL program was only given to teachers of the 5 core subjects, which are Bahasa Indonesia, English, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies. However, with time, teachers of other subjects became interested in the BTL program.

In Purworejo, BTL 2 training for non core subject teachers was held independently, with funding from the schools. Teachers of non core subjects in private and state partner MTs participated in the training. The teachers showed enthusiasm even though they came from different backgrounds and the training was held during a school holiday. The training was somewhat amusing, especially when teachers of different subjects, like Physical Education, Arts, and Religion Study, had to do practice teaching together.

Training and practice teaching was done in MTsN Purworejo. There were 60 participants with different teaching backgrounds, such as Al Quran Hadist, Akidah Akhlak, Islamic Cultural History, Arabic Language, Arts and Culture, Physical Education, Javanese language, and many more. This training was quite a challenge for the District Facilitators (DFs), as they had to deal with teachers of 13 different subjects. At first the DFs thought that there would be a communication problem. But in the end all the participants were able to grasp the training very well, as was shown in the reflection activities after each meeting.

When teachers are determined to change, any kind of challenges can be easily overcome. A teacher must not feel that what s/he knows is enough. They always have to develop themselves and live up to the spirit of ‘lifelong education'. BTL2 training in Purworejo could be the answer to the lifelong education challenge.

Who Says Measuring Coordinates can't be Fun?

IN a Mathematics lesson on measuring coordinates the school's soccer field was used as a resource. To do this, the field was marked with grids made of raffia. As a teacher I hoped that this lesson would be fun and more interesting as it involved cognitive, affective and psychomotoric aspects of my students.

Questions on the worksheet were presented in interesting narrations, relevant to our daily lives. For example, I used soccer as one of the themes: The house of soccer player Irfan Bachdim is located at coordinates (-3, 7), and every Saturday and Sunday he goes to national training in Senayan with (6, -9) coordinates, etc.

When measuring the coordinates on the soccer field, students could see their classmates' movements and they were allowed to give feedback about their classmates' movement. The gridlines were made by students themselves. This means that the learning media were created and used by the students themselves. In this lesson teacher made the preparations and acted as a facilitator.