My view toward Teacher, Teaching and Education

          “Teacher”, what comes to your mind when you hear the word “Teacher”? Some people will say that teacher is someone who teaches some students in a classroom. Some might say that teacher is someone that is so smart so that s/he is teaching the others. Or some people say that teacher is a hero without any service medal. Those statements are no wrong, but I have my own definition about teacher. For me “teacher is the front-liner of educational conflicts”, sounds ferocious, isn’t it? Why I said that teacher is the front-liner of educational conflict? There are two reasons that underlying my statement above. I said conflict because education has conflict inside it, especially in Indonesia. The first conflict is in the department and ministry of education itself. As you hear in every channel of news, Indonesian education is now very chaotic, for example: The decreasing of quality in National Examination, the late delivery of National Examination question and answer sheet, curriculum that always changes, corruptions of BOS money, until the idea of omitting English from elementary school. There are so many chaos and conflicts and teacher is the front-liner of it. The second conflict is more general, it is the conflict between the students and the lesson they learn.

            In this post I will focus more on the second conflict which is the conflict between the students and the lesson they learn. As I said in my introduction, I view that teacher is the front-liner of educational conflicts. So as the front liner, teacher should mediate the conflict between students and the lesson they learn. Teaching is not merely about giving a stand in front of the class, speak loudly, delivering the material on the book, and punish everyone who messes up in the class. it is not what teacher should be, so I come up with my second own philosophy which is “teaching is mediating the conflict between the students and the lesson they learn”. What does it mean by that? In my opinion, there is a gap between students and the lesson. And that's the teacher duty as the front-liner of educational system to connect the gap between the students and the lesson.  I know that teaching is not as simple as I thought before. I used to think that teaching is standing in front of the class, asking question, discussing some materials or delivering the materials, but after I got the real experience in teaching real students I realize that teaching is carrying the bigger responsibility to mediate the gap between the students and the lesson. There are so many way in mediating the students and the lesson. It can be by using game, using song, video, AVAs to make our teaching more interesting. It needs teacher creativity or else the students will not be connected to the lesson and the teacher will fail to mediate them both. So what is your opinion? Is it hard to be a teacher? Not only a teacher, but the front-liner of educational system. If I may say being a teacher is difficult and carrying so many responsibilities to the country and also to the students. So if someone out there said that “teacher is a hero without any service medal”, that’s very true!