Practicum 2012

Bismillahirrahmanirrahim...

Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah! Praise be to Allah and peace and blessings be upon Muhammad, the final messenger of Allah, His family and His companion.

Alhamdulillah 'ala kullihal. All praises be to Allah for only through His mercy that I am able to finish my degree after a long, and full of challenges 5 and a half years of studying. Having to study far away from family made things worst, but then again, thanks to Allah, I am able to do my family proud by, inshAllah, holding the Universiy of Otago's Bachelor of Education's scroll.

Time definitely flies when it is filled with meaningful chores and events. I have been busy for the past few months which made it impossible to practice some writing here. I was out on practicum ( if you guys do not what that is, well it's actually a 3-months periods where student teachers go out to school to taste the real flavour of teaching) and I was posted to a dual-medium school. What this actually means is that, the school that I was at, has two mediums, which are Bahasa Melayu and Mandarin. It was indeed a really good experience.

In the beginning, I was a little bit anxious about the challenges that I would face when I start teaching. Language barrier, communication issues. But I realised that I should not look at the problems and worry myself too much. A lecturer once told me that, if you focus on the negative things, you are the one who's going to attract all the negative energy and the unwanted things. So yeah, with God's will, I managed.

Practicum has made me really realised that the responsibility that a teacher carries on her shoulder.A teacher not only teach, but also cares and shapes the lives of children of the nation. This sentence sounds too-good but how do we shape the lives of these young, naive minds? A lecturer ( the same as above) once told me that a teacher always have one feet in the heaven and another in hell. It depends on how he/she does her work.What strikes me the most is that, the lecturer who gave me that advice is a Chinese. I really like how she was able to relate to the halal-haram concept when talking about honesty in work. Her advice stuck in my head ever since.

I pray that I am able to be one of those who are able to be truthful to my profession as a teacher. I hope to have a lasting conscience about my responsibility and give my best to my future students, InshAllah.