Pre-departure : Preparations.

One of dreams comes true?

Announcement poster about the opening registration for SEA Teacher Batch 6 Project.

On May 21st 2018, I got the information about SEA Teacher Batch 6 Project from one of my friends. I then decided myself to join this program because I'm craving for this since my first year in college, I knew that it would be a fruitful opportunity for me to get more experiences especially in teaching using English and broaden my networks. I registered my self to the coordinator of SEA Teacher in my university. After about a week waiting for the next information, we are asked to meet with the coordinators in 8th floor Phinisi tower of Universitas Negeri Makassar. That was become our first meeting with other students from other departements whose also applied to join this program. On that meeting, we were given an orientation about SEA Teacher project and some requirements to join this program, such as passport, English skill, teaching skill, etc. The coordinators also arranged our placements based on our majors and the requirement majors of the partner universities. At the time, I was assigned to Far Eastern University in Manila, Philippines with two of my friends. I will teach Mathematics since my major is Physics that is still has correlation with math. So, I took the challenge. Then, Mr.Yasser, our coordinator gave us the contact of the coordinator of university where we placed, he is Dr.Stephen Jay Co.

After contacting and sending our bio data to Dr.Stephen via E-mail, he then gave us the schedule for doing an interview. On June 28th 2018, we joined the interview using Skype as our platform. We were interviewed by Dr.Stephen. On that time, we were asked some simple questions, such as about our reasons to join this program, our majors, and the topics that we were interested in. Then, he explained about the conditions there especially about our dorm conditions where we were going to live for a whole month. On the evening, I sent a clarification e-mail to Dr.Stephen about the major that I was going to teach, I asked him if it was possible to change it become Physics in accordance with my major. Then, the day after that he replied my e-mail and told me that Physics would become my first choice, then math was the second, it will depend on what was available in the school.

We were interviewed by Dr.Stephen Jay Co, SEA Teacher B6 coordinator from FEU.

Day bye day passed, we prepared many things and stuffs that we needed. We got some other meetings with our coordinators in our university to discuss about that. They helped us to prepare those things, especially for the airplane tickets. We discussed about the departure schedules and any preparations. Our coordinators and the vice rector in student affairs also gave us motivations to keep spirit during this program, they told us that there will be many obstacles and challenges we passed, but we have to keep ourselves on fire. They also shared their life experiences how they reach the best of themselves right now. So, that’s why we tried to build our self confidence and trusted the results of every hard process we will pass till finally the day that we were waiting for was coming, departure day…