My Blog
This following is one of my valuable experiences as an elementary school teacher, teaching grade 2 as well as it\'s classroom teacher, in a private elementary school located in West Jakarta. The story occured during the academic year of 2006/2007.
As a teacher I would be very happy if my students are smart. What I meant with the word smart here was the ability to accept, absorb and understand the lessons quickly without any hard effort. Smartness in my opinion would also be seen from excellent test scores. And the good news was that I found most of my students were smart (according to my definition of smartness explained above). They could accept, absorb und understand the lessons I taught directly and their test scores were also excellent. Some of them were even able to do some problem solvings related to the topic of the lesson by their very own creative ways. I was more than happy. I didn\'t need to spend much effort teaching them. I just explained the topic and provided some examples of problem solving. My job wouldn\'t be too hard. There wouldn\'t be any remedies or extra hours to re-teach \'the slower\'.
But unfortunately the story didn\'t go that beautiful. I barely tried to accept the fact that not all of my students were smart ( again, according to my definition of smartness). There was a child, let\'s say his name was Dion, \'casted ashore\' in my classroom. From the teacher who had taught him before, I learned that he was diagnosed as \'a child with short concentration\'. Short concentration was the term used by educational psychologists and teaching practitioners to identify children who had difficulties to concentrate on learning. Their brains were so made up so that it was really hard or them to concentrate on the lesson, or thay could merely concentrate in a very short periode of time. For example, 15 minutes. After that they would play with stuff found around them (such as books, pencils, erasers, etc) or began to bable about anything. They couldn\'t study well. Therefore they wouldn\'t be well educated. So it seemed no good future for these poor children. \'God must have been doing wrong on them\' a thought crossed my mind.
And so was Dion. In every subject, he could only pay attention at about first 10 ten minutes of the lesson. After that he would do things I have explained above. No wonder, his test scores were cathasthropic.
I was mad of him. He drove me crazy. He burdened me with extra jobs. First I had to always straighten him up to be in order ( not to play, not to bable, pay attention during the lesson, etc). Then I had to work hard to attract his attention to the lesson so that he understand. It meant, my teaching methods might not be just ordinary. I was forced to be more creative on teaching. That\'s the only way to gain his attention. If I failed to gain his attention, he couldn\'t understand the lessons. When it happened, it meant extra time after school to re-teach or to give remidies to prevent him failing on tests. The fact was, he did fail many times. So I spent extra hours with him at school.
I was exhausted, frustrated. I began to complaint. \'Why should he be in my classroom?\'. I did also blame that \'wonder boy\' for his condition.
Despite of that situation, I saw him tried very hard to cope with his condition. He did try to concentrate on learning. But he just couldn\'t. He was just \'graced\' with that limitedness. He tried to overcome it, to get through it. But again, he was merely limited. Sometimes I saw that he tried too hard. Many times he got frustrated. He cried.
But something beautiful and comforting was felt in our dailylife atmosphere in the classroom. I knew for sure it was because of Dion. Me and his friends felt something pleasing our daily, our activities, deep in our hearts. It wasn\'t always recognized, but Dion\'s present comforted us. Ok, on the surface he bothered us by his limitedness. Sometimes we were annoyed. But there was something we couldn\'t deny about him. He cheered our days. Whereever he was, people laughed. He\'s just an adorable little boy, kindhearted, goldenhearted. The way he spoke, the way he laughed...just simple, sincere, pure and comforting. One word for him; \'adorable\'.
Dion always gave a hand for me and his friends unhesitantly. He checked my table to find out whether there had been any drink on it or yet. He asked me and his friends to find out whether we had already eaten or yet. He also seemed quite worry when I or a friend seemed sad or sick. He comforted us by his words, not to be sad, then helped his friend taking books to continue to study. Someday, I cried. Without any command, he took me tisyu. And say; \"don\'t cry, Ms. Rika. everyting will gona be fine\".I felt relief. He also told me repeatedly that he loved me (in fact I had told him many times before that I was mad of him, he burdened me). He did keep telling me that.
Anytime I remember it, some tears come out from the corners of my eyes. How selfish I was; thought that Dion was just a burden for me, causing only difficulties on me. I focussed only on the negatives sides; his limitedness, without seeing it as his uniqueness, without seeing his other sides of loving characters. At the end of the academic year, we all found that Dion had been a source of so much smile for us. His limitedness was covered, overwhelmed by his golden heart. Dion\'s math scores hadn\'t been 9 yet, but his heart had already.
I learned a lot from that boy (in fact i was the teacher). Yes, i did learn from that 7-years-old-boy. Learn how to be thankful even for our limitedness instead of grumbling about it. Most of all I learned that God has never been doing wrong to us. I asked Him for forgiveness that I had sinned by charging Him with wrongdoing.
Finaly, I think I should redefine the word \'smart\'.
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