Teaching Experience in Elementary Schools with Disadvantaged Students

Introduction

Hey, its’me again, Nadia! It feels like a long time since I last wrote on this blog. I intend to write back and try to remember any experiences that I want to remember and share with people. So this is one of my unforgettable experiences. Calling back to June 2021, I was still a fifth grade college student. I t was a time when educational activities were still based online because the Covid-19 pandemic quarantine was still going on. I am one of the students affected by it. I have less educational schedules than usual at that time.

During the Covid-19 quarantine period, the ministry of education in my country, Indonesia, has made good efforts in trying to improve the quality of educational resources. The Indonesian Ministry of Education created a program called “Kampus Merdeka” (This prgram’s name might be interpreted as an independent campus). There are many choices of activities in Kampus Merdeka program, there are online student exchanges, training activities, internship activities, and one of them is the activity that I will tell you about this time, “Kampus Mengajar” activities (mengajar means teaching, so basically the translate is campus teaching).

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Kampus Mengajar is an activity organized by the ministry of education by inviting universities across the country to work together to improve the quality of education for elementary school children by recruiting college students as teaching staff. College students who take part in this program will be sent to elementary schools with C accreditation (C accreditation is low accreditation, where most of the students come from the lower economic class). Students will be given a monetary allowance of Rp. 1,200,000/month, tuition assistance of Rp. 2,400,000, and 20 subject credits (to earn a bachelor's degree you need a minimum of 144 credits).

The Activity Begin

I am an engineering student, architecture department. In my university's architecture department, I was the only student who took part in this activity. The engineering faculty is generally the faculty with the largest number of students at any university, but out of all engineering faculty departments, only 6 people took part in this activity, this might be due to the lack of socialization of this activity in my faculty.

I also took part in the selection of this activity, after a few weeks the announcement came out and I got a placement in my city of residence. The first day this activity started, all students were ordered to gather at their respective city education offices. I went to the Medan city education office alone, without friends or anyone I know. Arriving at the location, with a heavy heart, I can judge that the coordination between the organizers of this activity, namely the Indonesian Ministry of Education and the education offices of each city, is not mature enough. The workers in the municipal services didn't know this program very well, we waited quite a while for the directive to start. I lost a photo on my first day of duty at the city education office, so I can't share it in this post ☹.

We were sent to go to the school where we were assigned. The school where I served was called SDS Biti School in Medan City, North Sumatera, Indonesia. Until there, once again I say with a heavy heart that the coordination that was carried out was not mature enough, the teachers and staff at the school did not receive any information at all that we were coming as a form of assistance from the government in improving the quality of education. They were shocked and confused about what task to give us. But finally the principal said that the first day would be our introduction day.

(This is SDS Biti School, the Elementary school I assigned)

The first day we went around the school, getting to know the staff, and getting to know the students. The principal of the school told us that currently school is only open for 4 days and is carried out alternately in anticipation of Covid-19. On Mondays and Wednesdays are students' schedules for grades 1, 3 and 5, while on Tuesdays and Thursdays are students' schedules for grades 2, 4 and 6. Even though I think this activity lacks coordination, I still feel that I get a lot of life experience from this activity.

We asked the school principal why teaching activities were still being carried out offline even though there were limited meetings at that time. The principal's answer at that time made me realize the reality and moved me. The principal answered “we are still opening the school because we want the children to keep learning. Parents complain to us that their children cannot study at home because they work and cannot guide their children, and some parents do not even complete their education so they cannot teach their children. Many of the student's parents also doesn't have an Android smartphone to carry out online learning. Parents begged us to re-open schools, we also reopened schools even though we had to be a little secretive.” I paused and thought, it's true that maybe this activity was wrong, at that time there was a limited quarantine, but school activities continued to run offline. But listening to those excuses, I felt that they had no other choice. The choice in front of these kids is simply offline, or they don't learn at all. And I just saw firsthand the fact that not everyone has access to the internet even if they want to.