TEACHER AIDE

What is teacher aide, what does s/he do, maybe those are some questions you would pose to me. Teacher aide as far as I know is somebody who voluntarily goes to school and help students getting difficulty.

Difficulties may vary, ranges from inability to read, write to inability to control themselves in behaving. Students who do not want to study due to family’s problem for example, might misbehave during lesson. Teacher aide will come to give motivation and facility so that students learn in any way s/he could.

Students whose first language is not English will also get help from teacher aide. Students will get involved in learning the language without being forced to learn. Once I knew a Sudanese child entering an elementary school, without knowing English at all. Instead of attending the lesson in class, he learned English with teacher aide. During learning process the Sudanese child would always listen to the teacher aide speak English. Then this teacher aide asked questions and shyly he tried to answer the questions.

Matahari, one of pak Madi’s sons who was brought to Australia could barely speak English. That is why he had to deal with teacher aide. He told me that teacher aide really helped him understand English, meaning he can speak and write English well. After one semester, he went back to class and learned any subjects at school using English, a language he didn’t understand before.

From the facts above, we can conclude the importance of teacher aide in learning at school. Therefore, can we apply the idea of having teacher aide at our school due to the failure of final national exam of our students?