Reflection 3: My Classroom Climate in School Experience Program

Reflection: My Classroom Climate in School Experience Program

School Experience Program (SEP) is annual program per each semester in Sampoerna School of Education (SSE). In SEP, all teacher candidates in fifth semester have to teach four times in the school. In this time, I went to Global Prestasi School in Bekasi to fulfill my SEP.  In this third reflection, I would like to write about my classroom climate when I taught my student. Classroom climate is situation where the students and teacher could feel positive and safe condition to learn. Four types of climate variables that are able to promote students’ motivation to learn.

The first variable is order and safety. Order and safety tends to classroom as secure place to learn. When I taught my students, I started the class by checking their absent. In addition, I also made classroom regulation and rules. On making the regulation and rules, I asked students to take part on it. I gave them the authority to define it. Finally, they wrote respect and raise-up their hands before they speak up as rules in my class. Regarding to the order and safety, let students take part on making decision in the classroom is one of the example that could promote students’ feeling of secure in learning process. The second variable is success. Success means the teacher establish the self-efficacy of students. In my humble opinion, I applied this variable in my teaching and learning process. After decided rules in the class, I started the lesson by conducting small talk with the student. I asked them by using present perfect question because our topic is present perfect. Once they enjoyed the small talk, I told them about today’s topic.

The third variable is challenge. Challenge means increasing perception of competence. It means the teacher has to capitalize on the motivating characteristics of challenge by encouraging students to identify relationship in the topics they study and the implication as well. Taking into consideration, when I taught, I did not put this variable on my learning process. As a result, the motivation of students on solving the task is low. A long line with task comprehension, another variable of effective classroom climate. I realized, I did not make kind of task that could increase students’ awareness of what they are supposed to be learning and an understanding of why the task is important and worthwhile.

In conclusion, those climate variables are the ideal condition of positive classroom climate. As a teacher, we have to consider that on applying those variables is not a piece of cake job. Teacher has to able to learn and write a reflection from each process on applying those variables. I hope, by doing that teacher could find the strategy to apply them together in her or his classroom.

Reflection 2: The Influence of Needs on Motivation to Learn

Reflection: The Influence of Needs on Motivation to Learn

According to Maslow, there are five levels of need. The first level is the physiological needs.  These include the needs we have for oxygen, water, protein, salt, sugar, calcium, and other minerals and vitamins. Maslow argues that it is the basic needs that man should fulfill first. Second level is the safety and security needs. This level is going to be fulfilled by you if you thought your physiological needs is reached. In this level, you will find safe circumstances, stability, and protection.  The third level is love and belonging needs.  When physiological needs and safety needs are fulfilled, a third layer starts to show up.  You begin to feel the need for friends, a sweetheart, children, affectionate relationships in general, even a sense of community. 

The fourth level is esteem needs.  In this level, Maslow identifies two types of self-esteem. They are lower one and a higher one.  The lower one is the need for the respect of others, the need for status, fame, glory, recognition, attention, reputation, appreciation, dignity and dominance.  On the other hand, the higher one involves the need for self-respect, including such feelings as confidence, competence, achievement, mastery, independence, and freedom.  The last level is self-actualization. This level emphases on realization of one’s potential doing that which maximizes one’s potential and fulfills one’s innate aspirations.

Regarding the five levels of needs by Maslow, level one up to four are known as deficiency needs. Deficiency needs mean if the level is unfulfilled yet thus the man will force them self to reach/fulfill it. However, level five is known as growth needs. It means needs in intellectual achievement and aesthetic appreciation that increase as people have experiences with them.

Instead of the hierarchy of needs my Maslow, in this session we also learned about self-determination theory. This theory focuses on innate needs that could influences one’s motivation. The innate needs are the needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness. In this reflection, I am not going tell the definition of each innate needs. However, I am going to write some ways to apply these needs in classroom context. To promote students’ need for competence, teacher might give the challenging task for them and comment toward their work. In addition, to promote students’ needs for autonomy, teacher might let students select topics for book reports, writing assignments, and projects. The last to promote needs for relatedness, teacher should avoid social comparisons in communicating assessment results. In conclusion, it is oke to teacher to always promote those needs in his/her classroom.

Reflection 1: My Motivation Is My Power

Reflection: My Motivation Is My Power

In fifth semester, I have an interesting course named Motivation and Managing Students for Effective Learning (afterward MMSEL). In this course, we are going to discuss about how the motivation could influence any aspects of students’ side to achieve effective learning. In the first meeting, we talked about the definition of motivation itself. In my humble opinion, motivation is such of massive power to establish my goals as well as to sustain them in my behavior. There are two types of motivation, the first type of motivation is intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is the power of doing or obtaining some things because intrinsically you choose to do it based on your own sake. In the other hand, the second type of motivation is extrinsic motivation. In contrast with intrinsic motivation, this type of motivation tends to the power of doing or obtaining some things because there are any reasons that come from out of your control such as reinforcement (reward and punishment) from other.

Regarding to the definition and two types of motivation above, I am going to tell about my intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as my power to achieve my goals in my life and relate those motivation with theory of motivation as well. In this case, I am going to write my motivation of becoming a teacher. At that time, I did not have any plan to continue my study in educational field (FKIP). My ambition was to continue in engineering field. However, day-by-day, I confused about chooses that God has given to me. At that time, I passed the Seleksi Nasional Masuk Peguruan Tinggi (SNMPTN) at Electro Engineering major in Sriwijaya Univertisy (Unsri). On the other hand, I also passed the English for Educational purpose major in Sampoerna School of Education (SSE). Finally, by facing many hard things, I left Unsri and have chosen SSE because of my family advices and the facilities that I will gain if I school there. At the first time, it was hard for me to study in SSE because it was not match with my intrinsic motivation. However, year-by-year, I proved that how extrinsic motivation could bolster my intrinsic motivation thus I am enjoying my study now. This time, I would like to say that my extrinsic motivation is a massive power for me to define my intrinsic motivation.

Relating with the theory of motivation, I put my case in behavioral theory. Behavioral theories focus on changes in behavior that result from experiences in the environment. In a deep analysis, how the external motivation could define my motivation and some incentives (positive and negative stimuli) that I got could motivate my behavior.