Promoting our Nationalism for the Country through Kampus Mengajar program
As we know that the Ministry of Education and Culture (now become Ministry of Education and Culture – Technology Research) has a program called Kampus Mengajar. This program allows the 6th to 8th semester students from any university in Indonesia to have an experience in teaching in order to help the development of the schools in remote areas. As one of the participants in this program, I want to share one of my experiences that happened.
That day was the most memorable day that I had ever had in this program. In this day, the school held a ceremony to commemorate National Education Day or Hari Pendidikan Nasional in Indonesia. The headmaster told us (the participants of Kampus Mengajar program) to become the ceremony attendant in this day and wear traditional clothes. We were so excited because it had been a long time we did not hold such as a ceremony.
The students were also invited to attend the ceremony, but not all of them were invited. Each class was represented by only 15 students, so in total, the students who joined the ceremony were 90 students. The students should wear masks and kept the distance a meter from each other. The reason was to keep students safe from the COVID-19 pandemic. The students were very discipline. All of them wore masks and kept the distance. They had also washed their hands before they entered the school.
The thing that made that day very memorable was that the students still remembered each process of the ceremony and could follow the ceremony until the end without even protesting or fainted even though the they had not not attended the school for more than a year. The teachers here and the participants of Kampus Mengajar program also did their job very well as the attendant of the ceremony. Since I had not joined the ceremony for more than a year, this event brought a certain excitement for me personally.
The event today made me realize that the students felt happy to be at school and have an interaction with each other. I could see that from their participations in the ceremony and their interaction with their friends. Since the pandemic began, the students had to study from home by themselves, even some students could not learn efficiently due to some problems such as the signal in their area was not very good, the students could not use the device, even some students did not have an appropriate device to learn from home.
In the ceremony, the headmaster delivered the speech of The Minister of Education and Culture – Technology Research. The main point of the speech was that we had to make the freedom of learning or merdeka belajar come true, not only as a dream anymore. I realized at that time, it should be a very big challenge to be realized because the process involves not only the teachers and the school, but also the students. The pandemic has made the process of the learning hampered. Although the ministry has already changed the system the Ujian Nasional to be Assesmen Keterampilan Minimum and has given an option to use the emergency curricula, again, not all school could do that.
I reflect to myself, what is my contribution to the development of the education in Indonesia? Realizing that there are lots of problems, I believe that this program (Kampus Mengajar) is one solution for the remote areas to get an equal development with the school that is located in the center of the city. This program allows the participants to help the school in three aspects, those are the teaching process in school, the administrative problems, and the technology adaptation. Those three aspects become the main goal for the participants in helping the school to get an equal development. Therefore, participating in this program makes me feel blessed. I could give my contributions toward the development of the education in Indonesia.
In the end, I really want to say to all of the teachers, educators, even the prospective teachers in Indonesia that we still have a lot things to do. We have to make our students in the present time and the future become a better generation. So finally, we could call them as the Golden Generation of Indonesia.