You Are What You Read

Okay, I want to vent some of my ire in here.

People, remember this

YOU ARE WHAT YOU READ

YOU ARE WHAT YOU WATCHED

YOU ARE WHAT YOU LISTENED TO

I am quite disappointed when my acquaintance posted a comment on my post. I posted something related to a rape case. A girl, 15 years old, was repeatedly raped by her brother, she didn’t realize that she was pregnant until she noticed that her belly got bigger. She will be incarcerated for 6 months because she had an abortion. I was like seriously dear judge and government? What about the brother? He was the root of all this problem. He got a punishment also, he will spend 2 years in jail. So you tell me people is it fair? Is it fair for the girl who is the victim? You decide.

I find it funny that we can’t even enforce our rule, all country in the world is probably the same, what a farce. So we have this Rule of Law that stated

“aborsi dilarang kecuali jika seorang wanita berisiko atau dalam keadaan tertentu jika dia diperkosa. Undang-undang mengharuskan bahwa aborsi harus dilakukan oleh profesional yang terdaftar tidak lebih dari enam minggu setelah kehamilan, dan wanita harus menjalani konseling.”

“Abortion is strictly prohibited unless the mother is at risk of losing her life or on a special occasion like if she was raped. The law stated that the abortion must be done by appointed and professional doctors and it must be done within the first ” weeks after pregnancy, and the woman must go and attend counseling sessions.”

The case we discussed above, the poor girl didn’t know she was pregnant until she noticed his belly become bigger, so 6 weeks deadline are passed. She had the abortion after carrying the seed for 6 months. That’s why she was incarcerated because she did it illegally, allegedly by her mother’s help.

Okay back to my acquaintance, he said, “Man why are you posting such a depressing news.”

“Well, it’s not like it didn’t happen. It happened buddy.”

“But you can post something more useful”

“Well, this is useful. ”

“No, it’s depressing”

After that, I didn’t reply. I know this news is not a cheerful one. However, should I just ignore it? It might be my fault to share it with my friends, I should have made it private only me. Unfortunately, there are lots of people who prefer to turn a blind eye when they read something that’s not fit their taste. Corruption, teenage prostitution, suicide, homicide and other “depressing” news. They did happen, maybe not near you but somewhere in this world, this kind of depressing things are happening.

I really saluted German, they have a dark history. Did they forget it? No, they embrace it, they even made a lot of monuments to REMIND themselves and the world about those hideous act their ancestors did. Unlike certain country, when they forgot their own history, in the name of move on. Germany also moved on but they didn’t forget their history. Maybe we should learn from German. Also relating it to this news, it surprised me how many people ignore “depressing news”. As if they don’t even want to know, it’s quite sad, it’s depressing, I already have a lot of negativity in my life, and other excuses not to read that kind of news.

Remember, you are what you read. If you only fill your mind with all positive, you might be dumb, the same thing if you only read depressing news. You have to be able to keep it in balance. You need to know and accept that life is not all sweet and sugar. Moreover, it’s also not always bitter and sucks. Broaden your horizon, read more, read the story from all sides. The PRO and the CONS, and decide for yourself what shall be your next action would be. I share that news as a reminder for myself, that I am lucky, out there, there are lots of people who would wish to have the life I have now. That there are lots of people are struggling, doing their best to stay alive, in the hope for better futures. There are victims who are shamed by the public because of publics’ obliviousness and foolishness. There are lots of social criminal happening out there, but remember there are also people who tried their best to protect those victims. Again, life will give us different tastes. One day it is great, another day it makes us vomit.

So, read a lot. You are what you read after all.

Advertisements

Two Different World

Tonight, just like usual night, I open my Google Chrome and typed fb.com into its search bar. The top of my feed was my junior high school teacher. He posted something in Bahasa, and the content much or less is like this.

A supervisor came to his school and went to his class. She then asked a student, “Hello young lady. Where are you from?”

“I am from Bonti ma’am”

“Bonti? Where is it?”, asked the supervisor lady again.

“It’s over there ma’am”, replied the girl while pointing toward the east.

“Did you have any ride? At what time did you leave your house?”

“No, ma’am. I go to school by walking. I leave my house at the same time I had my reading Qur’an in a mosque in our village”

“What time is it?”, asked the lady curiously. She filled with anticipated.

“At 4 A.M ma’am”, said the girl.

There are still students out there who are willing to sacrifice their energy and power to learn. Because they believe that education can make their life better. That little girl is just one example from many enthusiast Indonesian’s students who would and willing to do the effort. She walked, at least, one hour and a half to go to school. To educate herself. This kind of students that I am willing to sacrifice my time to nurture wholeheartedly. She comes to school, trying her best to learn as much as possible, and it would anger me if there are teachers who miss their class because they don’t feel like to enter. Yes, there are teachers like that, I heard the rumors, especially those who have already registered as ‘official civil servant’ (PNS). Don’t they see the sacrifice the child make? Don’t her story moved them? To be a better educator. At least improve yourself for your students. Because all kid that comes to our class are our responsibilities. What scared me the most as a teacher is I would accidentally, without realizing, kill my students’ zeal to learn. However, so far I haven’t got any students with that kind of inspiring background.

Some, if not most, of my students, they’re Junior High Students, had silver spoons on their mouth. They are quite lucky financially. However, for some of them, they took those silver spoon as granted. Since they barely have any hardship in their life, they are less motivated than the girl I mentioned before. My students have it better, they have better teachers, better classroom, better facilities, but why most of them couldn’t get educated as well as I expected. Are they stupid? Hell NO, they are all brilliant student with their own quirk. They have their strong aspects and weakness also, just like other people. However, why can’t I as their teacher maximize their full potential? I admitted that I only teach Math to them, but I do see in most students that have some kind of potential on other fields. Maybe they are mediocre in Math, but hey guess what? That’s also fine. Not everyone could get 100 in Math, they are fine as long as they didn’t go way below the average, 70.

Sometimes, it ached me so bad that they are wasting their time. Most of them spent their time on gadgets, looked at Instagram, played games, or other unfruitful activities. It’s not that I want to prohibit them to do those things, it’s okay to do those stuff as long as it didn’t take too much of their time, let’s say 2 hours a day? They haven’t realized what a powerful tool they have in their hand. Not everyone is as lucky as them. And they still couldn’t fully utilize that opportunity. I know they are still teenagers, but it’s both teachers and parents job to guide them, to make them fully utilized their potential.

So here a story to close my writing, it did happen.

We played Jeopardy, it was about General Knowledge. A group chose a question about history, and the question was about the place where Che Guevara died. First red flag, none of them know who is Che Guevara (I also didn’t know him till I was in college). The answer was Bolivia. I asked them, anyone know where Bolivia is.

…………… No Answer

I think this should be the first Red Flag.

A = It’s in Italy sir

B = Are you sure?

A = Yes I am pretty sure.

B = Okay then let’s check it together (I know it was in South America)

***googled it

“Bolivia officially known as the Plurinational State of Bolivia is a landlocked country located in western-central South America.”

B = It turned out it was in South America

A = **looks surprised

A = The last time I read it was in Italy, hmm when did they change it? **said jokingly

**The whole class was in laughter, I was smiling.

However, I realized that, at some point, these students were discouraged to learn about the world Geography. Whose mistake is that? Who knows, there are a lot of players that took important roles in a child education. I hope they could regain their thirst for knowledge like I did when I was in college (I become a curious person when I was in college). Because honestly, I was much worse than them when I was in Junior High. However, if they keep the same attitude as they are now I am quite worried about what kind of future they might encounter. They may not have the silver spoon all their life, maybe they might, who knows.

 

If you have any suggestion about how I can help them reignite their thirst for learning please feel free to comment and give me some insights because I love them. They are all good kids and I hope nothing but the best for them, in the present and in the future.

 

Nb = They don’t sound as bad as I described. They are academically well. It’s just that they didn’t fully take advantage of all facilities provided for them, the teachers, the internet access, great labs, to obtain as much knowledge as they can. Moreover, they could actually achieve much more than their current achievement. But hey they are teenagers, give them a break, right? I hate that excuse. However, it is true, there are a lot of things going on with teenagers, both their body and brain are under great changes.

 

Featured Image = https://quotelibs.com/

Why No One Told Me These?

Success, something that most, if not all, people want in their life. Success is also an abstract term because my definition of success and yours might differ starkly. Most people, pedestrian ones, only see the success of famous people from its surface. They didn’t really know how much struggle, bitter life experience those famous, successful people had to go through before they achieved and arrived at where they are now. It’s a good thing I watched GoalCast, Tedx, Vox and many great channels out there. However, there are not that many people who are lucky like me, who got internet access, laptop, or even smartphone.

Success is not as glamorous as it seems. There are some ugly truths behind someone’s success. They might experience some, they might experience all of the things that I will write. So let’s go to the list.

1. Being success is not as glamorous as you think. Do you think when you become successful you got to spend all your time laying around the beach? Go to parties and surround yourself with beautiful hostesses? Traveling anywhere you wish in one year? No. There are times that you need to work yourself really hard. Especially in the beginning, you will work much harder than when you were at your 9 to 5 workplace. You sacrifice lots of things, especially time. Time for yourself and time for your loved ones. Because you need to be immersed in your vision if you want to be a successful person. Moreover, you have to be willing to delay gratification, because great things take time. It’s not a one day process, it might not even one month, one year, even one-decade process. Success takes time.
2. You will struggle with work-life balance. Still related with the number one. Let’s take a look at Elon Musk? Do you think he has a good work-life balance? The answer is No. However, did he regret it? Again the answer is NO. He’s so passionate about what he is doing. He believes in his visions and does whatever he can to achieve those visions. He is aiming toward life satisfaction, not an instant gratification. He combined and integrated both his life and work for life satisfaction that in accord with their believed values.
3. People will turn on you, get used to it. Especially when you just started doing what you plan. Let’s say you are a young, 22 years old, 9 to 5 worker. And you feel your life was bored and you have some idea, a belief, that you believe will make your life more meaningful. So you decided to quit your job. However, when you tell your friends (or you thought they were your friends), most of them would likely discourage you. They might say, “Why man? Life is hard, finding a job is hard, not to mention starting business. The competition is rough” or something similar. So if you are easily swayed by what other people think, you might find it difficult to be a successful person.
4. You will never run out of problems. If you think you will have smooth sail once your success achieved, you are going to have a really bad time. Because problems never cease to exist. They will always be there, they are indifferent. No matter if you are a successful person or even poor person, problems will also loom you. Problems exist to teach us lessons, to remind us, and we have to learn, until our last breath. We will never stop learning as long as we alive. That’s why problems exist, it won’t let the complacent for having a good time. So, never expect your life will be without a problem once you are successful.

Those four are some ugly truth about being successful. It’s a lonely road at the beginning, but if you keep your heads up and focused on the road ahead you might be able to achieve your goal. Again, success is an abstract term because it differs from one person to another. However, you don’t want to reminisce about your life and said, “I wish I did this and did that”

Cheers.

Image Source – http://bryantarchway.com/what-is-the-true-meaning-of-success/

New rule in our Education: Zonasi PPDB(Pendaftaran Peserta Didik Baru)

I just lazily scrolling my Instagram page when I stumbled upon Kang Emil’s post. He wrote a status, the content of that status can be summarized like this. “Her daughter who got great results in her National Exam didn’t get accepted in a favorite public junior high school”. This is caused by a new regulation, we called it “Zonasi PPDB“. Although it hasn’t been implemented in all Indonesia, it has been enacted in some regions.

Basically, this rule states that public schools from elementary till high schools are obligated to give priority to students who resided or lived near the schools’. At least, 90% of the students must live nearby from the school.  Our National Exam score didn’t have too much impact after this regulation enacted, unlike previous years. Let’s look at it like this. Sarah is a brilliant student and lived in East Jakarta. She has got a high total score in her National Exam, we called it NEM. She got, let’s say, 38 out of 40. Sarah wants to continue her study in SMA 2 Jakarta (I make this up), located in West Jakarta and is quite famous for its academic merits. If she applied to this school last year, her chance to get accepted was quite high it might be around or more than 80%. However, since this new regulation is implemented, she is not so lucky. Because she lived quite far from SMA 2 Jakarta, her chance to get accepted are plummeting. SMA 2 Jakarta would prioritize its quota for students who lived around it. Let’s say we have Risa, whose NEM score was 28 out of 40 and she lived 600 m from SMA 2. Her chance to get accepted into SMA 2 is much higher compared to Sarah.

So what’s wrong with this new rule? Our community, Indonesians people, have been labeling school since like forever. There are excellent schools, normal public schools, so-so ones, and bad ones. We used to label certain public schools with “excellent(unggulan)” label. Moreover, most ambitious parents and students would target those “excellent labeled schools to continue their education.” Those schools already have some fame and even university would look at them when taking new students admission, back then. Furthermore, the requirement to be accepted there was based on academic merits, at least that’s the case for the last few years. Students with high NEM and good report cards have higher probabilities to be accepted. This new rule brought a big change. Students with big NEM will not necessarily be accepted into those schools. The reason behind our Ministry Education to implement this rule is quite reasonable and I can even agree with them. Unfortunately, as usual, there will always be resistance in the germinal state. There have been a lot of complaining by students and parents criticizing the new rule. It’s not fair in their opinions.

Our ministry of education enacted this rule and they did have really good purposes.

1. Equality in education quality in different regions.
2. Distributing smart students across different areas.
3. Decreasing/Eliminating our labeling cultures in hope, in the future, there will be no more classification or grouping of “excellent” and “bad” schools. Every school will have homogeneous or at least 11 12** qualities (Just like in Finland, I guess.)

So far, how well did people react toward this rule? As I said before there are a lot of complainings and disappointments from both students and parents. Furthermore, some students find a loophole and cheated the system. I read an article that explained, a student, let’s called him Rick. Rick also wants to continue in SMA 2 but he lived in North Jakarta, so he modified his registry, and change his address to West Jakarta(using KK, it’s another complex explanation, I can’t explain it here), near SMA 2 few months before he graduated junior high. And it turned out he got accepted into SMA 2. So, people can still cheat the system.

Ministry of Education has so many homework regarding their new regulation. The success or the failure of this program is on their hand. How well they can enforce this new regulation, how well they can prevent cheating from happening, how they manage and learne from all parents and students aspirations, constructive feedback, even their reproaches. They need to work on and evaluate this decision and find or create supportive policies to realize this new regulation’s goal. It’s a lot of work, but our kids’ educations are utmost important. They deserve to get better educations than we had. Because they are the future leader of this country. This one rule, for better or worse, will affect our future leader…

 

**11 12 is something we usually say to compare things with almost equal quality

 

Financial Advice: What You Should Know by 30s

I love to read and learn new things. The Internet is an amazing thing. It’s true that we are currently at information era in which we are being overwhelmed by massive information. It can inundate you, but if you are wise and choose information that might be useful to you, you might find that this era is the best period in human history.

Today I read some writings about financial advice in Quora, I also watched some videos regarding financial advice. I find this information is useful for me, that’s why I decided to write it down here in my blog.

1. Find passive incomes. Anyone will be happy if they have passive incomes. Passive income is money that you earn without doing much to make it. How I wish I could get passive incomes. There are lots of sources you can use actually. If you like writing you can publish your ebooks and sells it. Creating your own online shop is also a viable option.
2. Make investments. Nowadays, we can invest easily. You can invest in stocks, real-estate, bonds, gold, etc. However, remember this rule, don’t invest in something you don’t know about. Every investment has its own risk, so you have to be careful when deciding which investment will you make.
3. Invest in your health and education. If you are rich and you are sick to the extent you can’t enjoy your wealth, then what’s the point? That’s why during our 20s we should take a good care of our health. Avoid junks food, start exercising, and keep a healthy lifestyle. Because you are the person you will spend most of your time with. Also education, with the booming of online courses, you don’t have to spend so much money to keep your knowledge refreshed. Of course, you can take the conventional way, back to campus style and I do also hope I could do the latter. Nonetheless, you can enhance yourself by taking online courses. You learn any topics that interest you, you can even get certificates if you pay some money once you finished the course. Stay hungry and stay foolish. Education can enhance your career or you can even have a new start after gaining all required knowledge and skills you need to start whatever you are going to do.
4. Put part of your salary into a savings account. Why? Because it won’t be always sunny days. There might come rainy days or even worse, a storm that might hit you hard.  It is always good to have emergency funds in case something really bad happened to us.

So that’d be 4 advice that I like, they are relatable to me. There are, of course, more advice out there that you might think good. I read one that says “Kid is expensive”, but since I am single I didn’t take it into account, yet. Another one is “Be on the same page with your special other in financial matters”. I am still single so this advice can’t be implemented yet. I do take into my mind that 2 advice for future use.

I do hope this information would be useful and do manage your finance. Money might not be the main sources of happiness but there is nothing wrong having extra bucks in your arsenal.  And whoever said money can’t buy happiness, how wrong you are. You just don’t know where to buy it. However, it would be great if you don’t depend your happiness on materials and money is a kind of material thing-y.

Image Source = https://www.moneycontrol.com/

Growth Mindset

When I was a child, people always praised how smart I am. My academic achievements always placed in the top 3 in my class, during elementary school. I learned stuff quickly compared to my peer, and I did that by using barely minimum effort. Little did I know those praises were hideous toxic for my development.

When I was in Junior High, I didn’t study at all. Somehow, I manage to pass into next grade and graduate. People around me, especially my family and neighbors, still keep praising my intelligence. I felt entitled, I thought I am smart, I don’t need effort to success school. However, 2 months before graduating from Junior High I started to read books, about Science, Maths, English and I came to a realization that I know nothing at all. And I consoled myself if someone as smart as I am found these things difficult, how about other people who are supposedly dumber than I would be. Yeah I know I was being horrendously stupid back then but it did really happen. And do you know what I did after I found out how little I know about those subject? Nothing, I did nothing. I go back to my routine, playing games all day, go out with my friends, read lots of manga and enjoying my life. One month before National Exam, we have National Exam in here, and back then in our school, National Exam will decide whether we could graduate from Junior High or not, I started to worry. What if I failed to graduate, what would I do?  I might as well got ragged by my parents, I thought. So I force myself to start learning Math, Science, English and Indonesian Language. It was difficult at first because I am not used to studying and reading that kind of books. I can casually read 40 Volume, not chapters, of manga a day, but at the first day I can only read 10 pages and my head started spinning, and it took me an hour to understand those 10 pages of Science book, yeah I read them repeatedly to make sure I understand it, also I took some notes. By day, numbers of pages I read increase, I solve more problem in Maths and Science, learned some grammar, but one month is not enough to learn 3 years worth materials of 4 subjects, Math, Science, English and Indonesian Language. Fast forward to National Exam, I did what I could and when the result announced I couldn’t help but disappointed by myself, my scores were terrible. And do you know who I blame? No one, I didn’t care, I graduate at least, that what I thought. My parents didn’t really care too much about my Education as long as I didn’t fail a grade.

When I was in high school, I stayed in a boarding school. Far away from my parents, family, friends, and neighbors. I studied in a different Island. This is where my mindset started to change, from a fixed mindset person that felt entitled, to a try-hard student who would give some efforts in his study. I didn’t know about growth mindset during my high school study, but at least back then I value efforts highly. I now longer felt entitled and start to belabor myself to study.

I just believe as long as I give my best effort I can do it. That’s what I think since I was in high school till I graduate from Izmir Institute of Technology. A simple mindset that changes my life.

It’s lamentable that I learned about growth mindset few months after I graduated from University. At that moment I already entered workforces, and it has greatly helped me in my career. I just wished that I knew about growth mindset earlier.

So what is this growth mindset actually? Why it’s rueful for me to learn about it not earlier? Growth mindset is a belief that you can get smarter and better by giving efforts and using effective strategies in learning, in your career, in your life. It’s the idea that intelligence can be developed rather than it being set in stone.

A person with a growth mindset would think that,

1. Intelligence is not fixed, we can improve it through learning, giving our efforts and using the right strategies. I believe, back then, that I have no talent in Biology so I hate it so much. However, when I was in university, I started to get interested in biology and I read some topics about it like Mutation, DNA, Neuron, human Brain, etc. Those topics are interesting for me, and now I have at least a little knowledge about them. I don’t think that I have no talent in Biology now, it’s just that I didn’t give much effort in trying to understand Biology back then, and I didn’t use right strategies.
2. Efforts are really valuable. You don’t play games all day and become smart in Physics. At some points, you have to spare your time to learn about Physics, you need to put efforts to understand Physics’ concepts. It’s true some people understand faster than the others, doesn’t mean that the latter would not be able to catch up. They just need to put a little more efforts and they can do it too.
3. Failures are encouraging. A person with a growth mindset sees failures, setbacks as a nudge, a valuable lessons. They will think, “I use this approach and I encounter these problems”, instead of “I suck at this, I shall quit.” They took valuable lessons from every failure, setback they encounter. They didn’t just see their failure, you know, merely as a failure.
4. Yet, a magic word. Maybe you see how big the differences between these two sentences is. “I don’t know how to solve this problem, it’s hard” and “This is hard, I don’t know how to solve this problem, YET”. The growth mindset would be likely to say the latter. They don’t get discouraged whenever they encounter challenges, they even like challenge.
5. We should be progress oriented. Some people just care about the end result. Fortunately, it was not the case for people with a growth mindset. They value progress really high. They respect the progress. They enjoy the progress. They care about how they can thrive and be successful. They are concerned with their performance during their pursuit and will ask themselves questions such as: Did I perform better than last time or did I improve in the areas I was focusing on? How can I do it differently next time, and achieve better outcomes? How far I am from my goal? What steps should I do next to achieve my target?
6. All hail neuroplasticity. Maybe I am not the right person to explain what neuroplasticity is, but I would try my best to give a little introduction to it. Our brain is a mesmerizing marvelous thing. It is the human organ that never stops to stupefy, captivate, fascinate and awestruck me. Neuroplasticity, also known as brain plasticity and neural plasticity, is the ability of the brain to change throughout an individual’s life. It can be changed by giving our brain inputs. For example, if you want to be a better guitarist, you can rely on your brain to achieve that goal. “
   Neuroplasticity is the ‘muscle building’ part of the brain; the things we do often we become stronger at, and what we don’t use fades away. That is the physical basis of why making a thought or action over and over again increases its power. Over time, it becomes automatic; a part of us. We literally become what we think and do.
    
   Neuroplasticity is at work throughout life. Connections within the brain are constantly becoming stronger or weaker, depending on what is being used. Younger people change easily; their brains are very plastic. As we age change doesn’t come as easily; the brain loses some of its plasticity and we become more fixed in how we think, learn, and perceive. ” (https://brainworksneurotherapy.com/what-neuroplasticity)

There is more about growth mindset and it’s an awesome mindset. Every parent, teachers, mentors, couches, etc must have a goal to make their children, students and people under their responsibility to have growth mindsets.  Because life is never flat, people with growth mindsets response and react better when they encounter failure, unlike fixed mindset people who would blame others or their circumstances.

I think the world would be a better place if we have more people with growth mindsets. I do hope, parents and schools would strive toward this goal, nurturing children with growth mindsets.

Teacher oh Teacher

It has been well known that in most countries in the world teachers are underpaid. People know that teachers have crucial roles in our societies. Teachers are the designers of the future generations. Despite being that, teachers are underappreciated by societies.

I have read quite a lot of news that teachers have to do other jobs, yeah some teachers have 2 or 3 extra jobs to meet their basic necessities. It’s because the government didn’t pay them well.  A teacher, some who supposedly is dignified, exemplary and respected, needs to work 4 jobs to keep their welfare.

It’s unfair, how someone who tried to make someone else’s children become a better human being is treated like that. It’s no wonder that most countries educational systems are considered trashy. Because the teachers didn’t have high quality and capacity. Because teachers, one of the groups that play vital roles in education, can’t give their best performance. They are distracted by the needs to keep their welfare, doing other jobs. They barely have time to make a great lesson plan, it’s not surprising if the output(students) would be like that since the inputs(teachers) don’t have much time to plan their lesson time. Teachers also barely have time to join personal development program, attending online webinars, following ups all their students progress, etc.

What I want to discuss in here is following ups students progress. It looks like a simple work, but trust me, as an educator it’s one of the most difficult things to do. Moreover, if you teach more than 50 students. It means that you have 50 students that you need to check and follow up their study progress. It is by means no an easy feat. You need to sacrifice your time, you need to analyze what can you do to help certain students to improve their progress, you need to come up with plans to help them achieve their goals, you need to know how is your student ability each one of them, you need to set a realistic goals for them because without goal students will be less spirited and lack of drive. So is it easy? No way! It is hard. And TRUE TEACHERS have to do this, this is their job as a teacher, to help their students to advance.

After discussing with my colleague, I just realized that how big a teacher responsibility is and at the same time how hard it is. I am still far from being a great teacher but I am learning to be one. And this writing is a memento for me, a reminder for me to improve my capability as a teacher. I need to improve this one particular skill, following up my students progress. Is their score graphic increasing, decreasing, stagnant? What went wrong? What went right? What to improve? How can I make these students learn better? Is A learn better when he listens to me or when I provide him with some visual? What their graphic implied?Why there is an inconsistency in this student graph? There are lots of ups and downs and what should I do about it?

TRUE Teacher will do their best to follow-up their students progress, analyze the data, and come up with a plan that might help their students to be a better learner. That data can be obtained by doing a weekly assessment. It can be mini-quiz, 5 minutes quiz, or any other type of assessment. There are two types of assessment  Formative and Summative Assessment.

Formative Assessment goal is to monitor students learning and provide on-going feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning.

• Evaluation during the learning process.
• Monitoring the learning process
• The purpose is to improve students learning
• Evaluation includes little content area
• Consider evaluation as a process

It can be done by doing given examples,

• Drawing a concept map to represent understanding of a topic
• Polls
• Exit ticket
• One minute paper

As for SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT, its goal is to evaluate students’ learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark.

• Evaluation after the course completion
• Assign grades
• The purpose is to evaluate students’ achievements
• Consider evaluation as a product

Before teaching, I have no idea that there are two types of assessment. IMHO, Formative Assessment is more important than Summative Assessment. Summative Assessment will only be as good as Formative Assessment. And teachers need to do these assessments all the time. So we could imagine if teachers that are forced to work other jobs to keep their welfare quality. Would they be great and good teachers? Some of them might be, but most of them won’t. This is why people, parents, and government need to think more about teachers. An education can only be as good as its teacher, after all.

Images from = http://www.education.gov.gy/web/index.php/teachers/tips-for-teaching/item/1603-roles-of-a-teacher-in-the-classroom