What a day! What a moment! What an experience! 😄
Here's what happened during zoom meeting and what I did for the rest of that particular day.
The moderator for first class meeting was Ms. Leni from Jakarta. She was very lovely, kind, and great in doing her job. I was happy that we got to work together. I wish we'll get another opportunity to do it again. 😍
The beginning of the class went as well as could be expected. When it was my time to speak I started to deliver the presentation that I prepared. There were 32 slides in total. I also put my notes in front of me so I wouldn't missed on what I was going to say.
There were six sections on the presentation slides.
1. Disclaimers
You can actually see on Part 2 in a picture of notes that I put there. I mentioned that disclaimers for me was necessary because I needed boundaries and assurances. I'm not a "formal" teacher with teaching degree like S.Pd or M.Pd. I never had or give any English lecturing. I only ever did a private tutoring with no more than 2 students and they were all kids. I never taught anything to any adults. I never even became a speaker for nation wide, ever. I never speak anywhere but in English debating environment. My debating experience was different compared to what I was going to do. I was going to LITERALLY TEACHING all teachers from all around Indonesia. I broke a record of many firsts I did on that day.
Having said that, it was bound to be different. There had to be different expectations, opinions, views, methods, and so forth. THAT IS WHY I made some disclaimers.
2. Speaker's profile
In this section, again, I was going tell a little bit about my upbringing. A quick story of where I came from and how did I get there. An unknown person, a non-teacher, out of nowhere TEACHING to INDONESIAN TEACHERS. At the end of this section, a ruckus started to rise.
I admit that some of what happened was due to my recklessness in delivering my presentation. I spoke way too fast for them. I used full English since I started speaking. People started to get confused. They scratched their heads and put their hands up. The chat room was blown up. People saying, "Please slow down.", and things like that. It was pretty comical though. 😁
Ms. Leni then spoke up. She kindly told me what was happening and she also helped me so much in calming down the participants. I could never handled that situation well if it wasn't for Ms. Leni. So, from the bottom of my heart, thank you very much Ms. Leni. 😘
After we got the situation under control, I continued my presentation only this time I tried to use bilingual, mixing it with Bahasa.
3. All About Mindset
For this section, let me rewind a little bit further. Why did I made this section?
As you can see, the topic was BASIC ENGLISH (SELF-INTRODUCTION). For me, seeing that title, I thought "That was easy. Anyone can do self-introduction. What more can I tell?" Yes indeed, there are some aspects regarding self-introduction but like, it wasn't that much. I confirmed to Mz. Phia prior regarding the rundown of the meeting. She said I had 50 minutes. 50 minutes to only speak about self-introduction was way too much time.
So I decided to explore on the BASIC ENGLISH. But, I didn't want it to be like regular things we got in school. As far as I know the formal curriculum at school is more like a "themed" chapters. For example, first chapter is about classroom. Teacher told students that pencil is pensil, eraser is penghapus, table is meja, and so forth. That was not what I wanted.
When I think of BASIC ENGLISH, I think about the nature of English. English is a language. Then the nature of language is a way of communication. Then communication was inherently everybody's need as human. Meaning that communication is important and when we think more about it, everything keeps evolving. The world, the people, the technology, everything keeps changing. In order to keep up with that we had to be able to communicate better. That's why we need to see English as a communication, something that we needed to understand and to master.
I believe it's ALL ABOUT MINDSET because like it or not, that's where everything starts, MINDSET. Just seeing who we are right now, what do we do, how do we see things, what are our characteristics as a person, all of things are subconsciously from the mindset that we had before. People decided to be teacher because they wanted to share knowledge, to educate future generations. It was huge self-less act that came from where? MINDSET.
If people think that their life is all about money and profit, they would not choose to be a teacher. They would take business class, be entrepreneur, or work in big companies. But teachers are none of those ideas.
By changing our mindset about how we perceive English language it would increase our determination to learn English. We understand the urgency of it, so we feel that we need to learn it. Then the nature of learning is a PROCESS. PROCESS TAKES TIMES. It's going to be different for each and every single individual. Some might be able to go faster, some might need to go at slower pace, but it will be okay as long as we got the right mindset in the first place.
It will prevent us for giving up when we're facing obstacles, it will fuel us to keep going on further.
In relation with proving how big the importance of the right mindset, I was also attempt to invite the participant to not use anything as excuses. One of the excuse that people usually mentioned to justify their lack of English ability is THEIR PAST LIVE. They said how they were born in remote area or villages with no access. Some said they never had any English lesson back when they were still in school. The list goes on.
With the right mindset I was going to encourage everyone to shift their point of of view regarding their past live. We should not dwell on the past. Let's be grateful and be at peace with the live we had, all the memories we made and the knowledge we gained. Let's try not judged our past as good nor bad rather than just IT HAPPENED, meaning there was nothing we could do to change it. The only thing we can do is move forward. Let's grow into a better person, do better at what we can do, learn better so we can improve more, and share better to the others.
THAT IS WHAT I WAS ATTEMPTED TO EXPLAIN.
Fiuuh.. This has gotten more emotional than I thought. 😅
For the 4th to 6th section, let's continue on the next part.
_to be continued_
PS: Please don't be a silent reader. Any of your comments will be highly appreciated. Thank you.
💖Vina
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