Learning and Teaching: My Work Experiences

My Work Experiences

Work experience is one of the most important components to show and prove how eligible we are for a particular job and career. It portraits our professional records of our major and special field, and it helps any correspondents find out our quality and how it fits the needs of their company or institutions when hiring us.

I have begun to work as a teacher for over 10 years in formal schools as well as non-formal educations in Indonesia. I decided to start teaching when I firstly entered college. What made me feel interested in this profession was actually when I first got an offer to regularly tutor a secondary school student living near my boarding house. He said he needed to prepare for national exam in which English was one of the compulsory subjects to test and wanted me to help him. I was very pleased to hear it and pretty sure that becoming a tutor would be a good way for me to apply my knowledge and develop my teaching skill. In fact, I believed that the more often I practiced teaching, the more knowledge and experiences I gained.

I really enjoyed my time in campus joining all classes I took and participated in some extracurricular activities. However, for me, it was also important to have some teaching activities so that I could learn about how to deal with students and help them solve their learning problems. One day, in 2007, a friend of mine offered me an interesting job which completely stimulated my motivation in teaching English. He told me that some doctors and government employees from Dr. Karyadi Hospital Semarang were preparing to live in Australia for a duty, and they needed me to teach them English conversations for around 6 months. They said they would pay me with high wage if I accepted this offer. Well, opportunity comes once in our lifetime. Eventually, I said ‘yes’ and signed the contract.

All of my teaching experiences allowed me to improve a wide range of skills, which especially had something to do with various teaching and learning methods and strategies appropriately used to effective teaching. They also led me to develop and enhance my knowledge about the English language and its vocabulary. Nevertheless, someday, I found myself bored of any kinds of tutoring activity since I did not feel like I was a real English teacher who normally worked in school. But a year later, I was glad of being recruited to be teacher in a private school in Semarang where I firstly learned to be the real teacher.

1. Sekolah Alam Arridho (2008 – 2009)

In this school, I taught students from primary to secondary levels and worked with other senior teachers designing syllabus and lesson plans. Here I implemented many different kinds of method, technique and strategy of teaching that I learned from my study in campus.

2. Primagama Salatiga (2009 – 2011)

Having one year-experience in teaching made me want to try something much different. Working in office as a staff or clerk would be challenging I supposed. In July 2009, three months prior to my graduation, I decided to work as an academic staff in an Education institution located in Salatiga, a small town which is close to Semarang.

3. SM-3T and Professional Teacher Training Program /PPG (2011 – 2014)

After working in Primagama for about two years, I made an unforgettable decision by resigning from this job and being unemployed at home. However, four months later, I applied for the government teaching program named SM-3T which aimed to focus on developing education in remote and outermost areas of Indonesia. In this program, I lived in a very remote village teaching secondary students there for a year. Below is the school where I dedicated myself in teaching through the SM-3T program. Upon the completion of the program, all of the participants had to take one-year education in a teacher training institution called PPG.

My first arrival at school


	Going home to Kampoeng Muslim with students

Walking to home after teaching National Exam prep for 9 graders

Me and classmates at PPG class

4. Permata Bangsa International School (2014 – 2015)

In one hand, I once thought teaching in this school was just a dream for me. The only thing which made me fall in love with this school was the English communication atmosphere it provides as well as its curriculum and authentic learning materials and sources from Cambridge International Curriculum (CIE). The regular workshops and training for teachers also enabled me to improve my pedagogical knowledge and skills in the ESL teaching contexts. On the other hand, due to its individual ownership system as a private institution, it is sometimes difficult for teachers to get equal rights on their tasks and salary given. But I really learned a lot and grew up from this school instead. In here, I found and read many useful books and materials from Cambridge which led me to be more rounded and to have broad understanding about English world.

5. Teaching TOEFL and IELTS (2012 - 2015)

Resigning from an international school was such a difficult decision to make. But this was the moment where I started to learn a valuable lesson that changed my life. In my opinion, losing job does not mean that we also lose our profession. I had to keep learning and try new things. I had established TOEFL and IELTS preparation course since 2012 and planned to develop this business again. This course also provides an online or distant learning through interactive website and other social networking sites that I self-manage. Surprisingly, my all advertisements got a lot of responses from the visitors, and I could finally earn much more money from this business. In fact, running a business on TOEFL and IELTS like this still became a great idea since the number of people taking these tests has been increasing lately. Moreover, I believed that teaching these tests would even motivate me to practice and prepare those such tests.

6. Karangturi National School (2015)

Having a good quality time with family at home was so nice. But then I got a call from a friend telling me that her school in Semarang urgently needed a new teacher immediately, as one of the English teachers was absent for 3 weeks due to maternal reason. I approved this offer and worked there until the real teacher returned.

7. LBPP LIA (2015)

LIA is known as one of popular English courses in Indonesia. With its branches spread all over the country, there have been thousands of students joining this course since its establishment. As the vacancy advertised, I thought undoubtedly about this teaching opportunity and immediately applied for the position required.

8. Indonesian Merchant Marine Academy/ AKPELNI (2015 – 2016)

Teaching English in higher education has been my dream since I finished my undergraduate study. Honestly, I used to get an offer to work as a lecturer in a teacher training institute located in Madiun city, East Java (IKIP PGRI Madiun) in 2011. However, for some reasons, this dream did not come to realize since I had not received the official teaching letter (NIDN) from the Directorate of Higher Education, Ministry of Education. AKPELNI has finally helped make this dream come true.