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The School

After the fun at welcome party, Ma'am libey took us to our "office" for the next 2 weeks, Saint Mary's University Junior High School and Science High School. It wasn't far from campus, only like 2 minutes less by Tricey.
Truly a massive school.
Junior High School Department of SMU





A quick snap before we going inside

the view from inside.

SMU Junior High School also part of the Saint Mary's University as secondary derpartment. The School itself use K to 12 Curriculum which is the in the Philippine's Education System.
The logo of SMU


However, the curriculum was modified since SMU Junior High School is a private school, like having a special class for the English subject, especially for the speaking, and some system to meet the standard from the university. K to 12 means the students will through 12 years of education, 6 years for the primary education, 4 years for the Junior High School, and 2 years for the High School.



Source: http://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/k-12/

In Primary Education and Junior High School (Grade 1 to 10) the students will experience an enhanced, context-based, and spiral progression learning curriculum with the following subjects:

 Source: http://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/k-12/

Okay, back to the school. The School Itself has 5 buildings which are named based from the CICM key people, like Alberto Van Overbeke, CICM, for the "A" building, the same naming system in Saint Mary's Unversity. The School has complete facilities to support the education system, a library on the first floor of the F building, alongside with the computer room for internet and ICT subject, a laboratory on the second floor of the I bulding which was quite neat, a gymnasium, Technology and Livelihood Education (TLE) room, canteen and of course a chapel on the fourth floor of the F building, since it's a catholic school. Everything was very neat, clean, and the students are friendly.

Another view.
The Library Room
The TLE Room
The computer room (Next to the library)

Ma'am Libey took us to the principal room, and she introduced us with Sir Mile, or Melencio G. Bernardino, Jr., he was the "man of the school", and also his secretary, Sir Jessey, or Julius Ceasar D. Maddawat, i see he was very young, maybe 2 years older than me. All of the teachers in the SMU Junior High School was from Saint Mary's University, so all of them were the students of Ma'am Libey and Ma'am Matet (Ma'am Libey was also Ma'am Matet's student). Unfortunately, i don't take any pictures during in the principal's room, because we had a lot of conversation with Sir Mile, so i forgot to take any pictures, he was a very nice person.

The locator chart of the principal's room.

Sir Mile then took us for a quick tour, while looking for our cooperating teachers, because it was in the school time, so the teachers are in their class. Mega was the first one who got the Coordinating Teacher, followed by Iin, then Kiki aaand, finally, the last, me, since i wasn't good at Physics or Chemistry. My Coordinating teacher was a woman, her name is Ma'am Adora, or Adora Marie M. Peralta. She teach for grade 7, 8 and 10 for Science and TLE, she was very good at cooking.


She was very excited to meet me, because it was her first time to get an exchange student, the previous batch was only in english subject, but at that time, the science teachers got their time. Ma'am Adora showed me her schedule and her lesson plan format.
Busy eh? the circled sessions are the classes i teach.

20 hours of teaching practice, and each week consist of 14 sessions from 4 classes.
Every subject in a day has 1 session which was only 60 minutes, so much different in Indonesia which is like 3 hours for 1 session of a subject. So the total time for my practice teaching was 20 sessions or 1200 minutes (20 hours), it was like a week half. She also gave me 3 books as learning source and "inpiration" for me to plan for the class activity. Oh, Btw, I was teaching for Environmental Science in Grade 7 and Science for grade 8, so based from the schedule, i had 4 class to teach: Grade 8 Mabait and Masipag, and Grade 7 Earth Savers and Environmentalist. Those are the class name, Mabait means "Friendly" and Masipag means "Hard Workers" in Tagalog.

For the learning resources in SMU Junior High School, the students use their textbooks, internet, and GENYO E-learning which is neat, the teachers also able to design their own materials in GENYO for the students to access, but unfortunately, i don't have an account to access GENYO. Ma'am Adora told me to submit my lesson plan a day before my first session, then it be January 29th, because Ma'am Adora went out of town for 5 days, so she told me to ask another science teacher to join with the class for observation. About the lesson plan, it wasn't complicated as the lesson plan in Indonesia, SMU has 2 types of Lesson Plan: Detail, and Semi-Detail.

The Detail one was in portrait format which is contained the materials and the class scenario while the semi-detail was only highlighted the materials and the objectives of the lessons. Ma'am Adora's lesson plans are in Semi-Detail format and they can be accessed here:
Based from the lesson plan, session in the class consist of 4P's (Preparation, Presentation, Practice and Purposeful Closure). During in Preparation, teacher start the session by asking the students to lead the pray, giving a short review of the past session and some apperception. In Presentation, the teacher present the students materials, continued by Practice, which is the main course of the session where the teacher give the students activity. The last is Purposeful closure where the teacher end the session by giving the conclusion throughout the session and pray. For the assessment, the teachers in SMU usually give the student quiz or exam which is consist of multiple choice, and essay.
After that, we talked about our life and the difference between education system in Indonesia and Philippines. Everything was done, and i left the faculty room and went back to the dorm with the other. (C/H)

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