Indonesian Teachers, Independent Teachers

(UKWMS-20/2/2020) – Teachers are professional educators whose main tasks are educating, teaching, guiding, directing, training, assessing, and evaluating students, starting from formal education in early childhood, elementary education and all the way to secondary education. Thus, a teacher needs to be competent. In Indonesia, teacher competency is obtained through a professional education stage called the Teacher Profession Education Program (Pendidikan Profesi Guru or PPG Program in Bahasa Indonesia). After finishing an undergraduate or an applied degree program, a person who wants to be a teacher will have to go through the PPG program. PPG educational program offers a teacher certificate that allows a teacher to teach in schools.
Through this PPG Program, the teacher’s competency and professionalism are proven to be of high quality. One of the organizers of the PPG Program is the Faculty of Teachers Training and Education of Widya Mandala Surabaya Catholic University. Students of the PPG program came from various backgrounds. Some came from the East Java province and some from places in the East Nusa Tenggara province, such as Manggarai Regency, South Central Timor, Flores Island, and Sumba Island.
On February 20, 2020, the PPG Program of WMSCU Faculty of Teachers Training and Education conducted a graduation session for 106 English teachers. Located at the WMSCU Kalijudan Campus Auditorium, the program opened with the Sesonderan traditional dance from East Java, followed by a welcoming speech from the Departmental Chair of the PPG Program, Prof. Dr. Agustinus Nadiman. The graduation procession was marked by giving Teacher Certificates to the graduates and reading the Indonesian Teacher Pledge together. Also present at the graduation were Drs. J. V. Djoko Wirjawan, Ph.D. as the Vice Rector III of WMSCU, and Prof. Dr. Anita Lie, one of the professors from the Faculty of Teachers Training and Education – WMSCU.

To further strengthen their competency, in addition to graduation celebration, they also took part that day as participants in a National Seminar with the theme “Becoming an Independent Indonesian Teacher,” given by Prof. Ali Muzakki, M.Ag, Grad.Dip.SEA, M.Phil, Ph.D. He is the Dean of Faculty of Social Science and Political Science (FISIP) from Sunan Ampel Islamic State University Surabaya (UINSA) and the Secretary General of Nadhlatul Ulama Regional Administrator (PWNU) in East Java.
In his seminar, Prof. Muzakki stated that to become an independent teacher, a teacher must finish with his or her own troubles first, understand himself or herself first before being able to solve other people’s (students) problems. “In addition to being able to accept him/herself, a teacher must have a nationalist spirit and meet the literacy requirements, consisting of academic aspects, religious aspects, and national aspects, so that critical thinking can be created,” added Prof. Muzakki, who is also the Chairman of the East Java Education Board. This statement itself was made to highlight the phenomenon of a decline in nationalism among young people.
Prof. Muzakki added that teachers have a very important position in maintaining nationalism. According to him, taking care of this nation must also start from teachers as educators and input providers, especially in the post-truth era. “The function of the teacher himself is twofold, namely as a source of information (knowledge), and a source of example (manner). The function as a source of information itself has long been replaced by IT, but teachers must not forget that they also function as a source of example,” he explained. Even a teacher, he said, must act professionally and nationalist.