What have I learn?

During the first day of tutorial, it was quite interesting. Miss Kastoori asked us to role-play a simple and short play called “Bingo” by Edward Bond. Each groups need to present their own interpretation by role-playing it. My group and I were all involve in the play. We acted as students as students discussing homework and bombarding one particular student. While looking at other people’s performances, I would never think that one simple play can be performed in many ways. After that first class, I learned that drama can help a person expand his or her imagination and creativity.

Besides that, before taking this course, I thought that drama is just dialogues but during lectures I learned that drama is more than that. In a play, there are a lot of genres like comedy, tragicomedy, farce, and so on. In lectures, I also learn there are two types of theatre: Aristotelian and Brechtian. Beforehand, I never heard of these terms and taking this course has broadened my mind on the world of theatre and drama. Moreover, listening to the lectures isn’t so bad since there were terms or conventions in theatre that were foreign to me like soliloquy and the aside. I have never expected that drama has so much of these aspects and that really change my perspective on drama.

Any Questions?

The question that I still have regarding simulated teaching is how to make my activities more interesting. When preparing for my simulated teaching, I’ll always have problems figuring how to make my activities more appealing to the students. I do worry that my activities could bore the students and that will make the students uninterested towards the lesson. This kind of problem usually I can solve on my own. It would be good to have some feedback from my peers about the activities, so that I can make more improvements. I think that if there is something wrong with the activities, I should do better and review them through discussion with friends by asking for their opinions. If I made a mistake, I’ll treat it as part of the learning process and learn from it. From what Ms Kastoori has said during my first class, it’s better to learn our mistakes now than during our teaching practical.

Any changes?...Hmm...

If I were to deliver the similar lesson again, I would make some changes for it. I think that I could have done better with some correction of my activities and improve the way I present. From Ms Kastoori’s advice, I should have separated the extract for the earlier scene and the later scene. The lengths of the extracts also need to be adjusted since they were not well balanced. If I had done so, students could have seen the changes of Oedipus’ character even clearer. For the while-reading, I would change the exercise because that is what most of my course mates were doing which was identifying the connotation of the words they have found in the pre-reading stage. After reviewing my own lesson, I find the while-reading activity is a bit redundant. So, I should have made some changes to that activity to make it more interesting for the students.
Another thing I would like to change about the lesson is myself. I was not well-prepared and that affected my confidence. I didn’t prepare the answers for the activity and when one of my students made a mistake, I was corrected by Ms Kastoori and that affected my performance as well. So, before I have any presentation, I need practice and review my presentation. I will learn from this mistake and not repeat it again because it is quite embarrassing and I want to better in my presentations especially my simulated teachings.

My strengths and weakness in S.T....moving forward for improvement

My strengths in my simulated teaching is my ability to project my voice and my ability to connect with the students. In my opinion, voice projection is very important in the teaching profession. I realize that when I teach, having good voice projection students tend to pay more attention. Since in real classroom situation, students will not pay much attention when the teacher speaks softly. So, I train myself to speak louder especially when doing my simulated teaching. Besides that, I also realize that I can connect to the students through a bit of humour. Listening to the students’ opinions is also part of connecting and understanding them. Students nowadays want to be heard and as teachers, I think should try to listen to the students’ views. The way I maintain this is through daily interaction and pay attention when someone is talking to me.
As for my weakness, I was not fully prepared during my simulated teaching. This affected my performances, thus, also affected my confidence. My exercises were not good enough because the extracts I chose for the pre-reading were inappropriate length. So for my other simulated teaching, I need to concentrate on these aspects as to not make the same mistakes again.

My simulated teaching

My simulated teaching was on the 13^th of March. For my set induction, I showed a picture of the prime minister and asked the students to describe him. Then, I related the description of the prime minister to introduce the lesson. My lesson was to teach the characteristics of Oedipus in the earlier scene and the later scene. As for my pre-reading activity, I asked the students to highlight the characteristics of Oedipus in the extract from the prologue and the exodus scenes. For my while-reading, students need to list down the words and identify the connotation of the words.

In my opinion, simulated teaching does have its similarity and differences with real teaching. In terms of similarity, teachers in schools would relate certain things to the story in a way to introduce the story to the students. There are some differences as well. In simulated teaching, we encourage students to discover things but in schools, teachers usually spoon-feed the students. In schools, teacher would go straight to the teaching of the content. Unlike simulated teaching where we ask the students to highlight or identify certain things from the text. Besides that, the classroom environment is different. In simulated teaching, students are more cooperative since they are my course mates. However, that is not the case in real-life teaching. Students tend to challenge the teacher and the teacher needs to know how to handle the class effectively.

So, in real-life scenario, teaching is quite different than simulated teaching. But simulated teaching is a good experience for teachers-to-be as a practice before entering the schools. They can prepare themselves and plan their lesson better when teaching in schools.

My Dramatic Journey

This post is long overdue, so might as well get started. On March 7^th, a bunch of friends and I went to the Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (KLPAC) to watch a play. When we arrived there, I was impressed by the building’s design which is modern and artistic. The play that we have chosen was The Secret Love Life of Ophelia. The play is actually depicting the secret love life of Hamlet and Ophelia that was not shown in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

As I entered ‘pentas 2’, I was surprised that the stage is small and on it was just two couch and two tables. What amazed me was that the play starts on time regardless the audience has not fully arrived, which is so different than cinemas where they play advertisements to give time for the viewers to enter the cinema.

As I watch the play, I think the story was a bit of a bore since its Shakespearean English and not modern English. So, it took time for me to process what the actors were saying. What I like about it is that the setting is modern but not the language which I think was nice. Besides that, I was very impressed that the actor’s acting especially the part where he was making coffee without any props in other word making imaginary coffee. So he must have practice a lot for that part.

The play came to an end when the actors bowed and the audience applauded for their performances. Overall, theatre is not as boring as I thought at first, so that change my perspective on theatre. It was actually quite an interesting experience and I don’t mind watching another play again.

Teiresias. Who is he?

Tiresias was a prophet of Zeus. There are different stories about the cause of his blindness, the most direct being that he was simply blinded by the gods for revealing their secrets.

On Mount Cyllene in the Peloponnese, as Tiresias came upon a pair of copulating snakes, he hit the pair with his stick. Hera was not pleased, and she punished Tiresias by transforming him into a woman. As a woman, Tiresias became a priestess of Hera, married and had children. After seven years as a woman, Tiresias again found mating snakes; depending on the myth, either she made sure to leave the snakes alone this time, or, according to Hyginus, trampled on them. As a result, Tiresias was released from his sentence and permitted to regain his masculinity. Tiresias was drawn into an argument between Hera and her husband Zeus, on the theme of who has more pleasure in sex: the man, as Hera claimed; or, as Zeus claimed, the woman, as Tiresias had experienced both. Tiresias revealed woman's greatest secret: that she receives the greater pleasure: "Of ten parts a man enjoys one only." Hera instantly struck him blind for his impiety. Zeus could do nothing to stop her, but he did give Tiresias the gift of foresight and a lifespan of seven lives.

Tiresias appears as the name of a recurring character in several stories and Greek tragedies concerning the legendary history of Thebes. For example, in Sophocles' Oedipus the King, Oedipus, calls upon Tiresias to aid in the investigation of the killing of the previous king, Laius. At first, Tiresias refuses to give a direct answer and instead hints that the killer is someone Oedipus really does not wish to find. However, after being provoked to anger by Oedipus' accusation first that he has no foresight and then that Tiresias had had a hand in the murder, he reveals that in fact it was Oedipus himself who had (unwittingly) committed the crime. Outraged, Oedipus throws him out of the palace, but then afterwards realizes the truth.

Tiresias died after drinking the water from the spring Tilphussa, where he was struck by an arrow of Apollo. After his death he was visited in the underworld by Odysseus, to whom he gave valuable advice concerning the rest of his voyage, specifically concerning the cattle of Helios, advice which Odysseus' men did not follow, to their peril.