INDEPENDENCE CLASS: PROJECT BASED LEARNING

“Exploring Potential: Building School Literacy for Lifelong Learning”

With:

Frederikus Mikhael Sila, S. Fil

Abstraction

This article is my experience as a teacher of Catholic Religious Education and Character for Grade VII Middle School, VIII, and IX, namely from year 2018 until 2021. During this period, I found various problems, such as a lack of student involvement in learning, fear of having an opinion, and students' inability to think critically and creatively when answering exam questions. This problem is not only experienced by me alone, but it is also a complaint of all teachers after the Covid-19 pandemic. Behind this problem is the root of the problem, namely the lack of interest in reading and writing in students. Literacy has an important role in all subjects, and increasing literacy in schools is the main goal so that students are more active in reading and writing. Thus, mereka dapat mengembangkan kemampuan berpikir kritis dan kreatif dalam kehidupan sehari-hari, baik di lingkungan sekolah, rumah, maupun masyarakat.

Pada awalnya, saya dipercayakan oleh sekolah untuk mengajar Pendidikan Agama Katolik dan Budi Pekerti untuk SMP kelas VII, VIII, dan IX dari tahun 2018 until 2021. During this period, saya menemukan persoalan di mana siswa kurang aktif dalam pelajaran, takut salah dalam mengemukakan pendapat dan bahkan ada yang tidak berani memimpin doa. Besides that, kebanyakan siswa memiliki kemampuan berpikir yang lambat dan cenderung mudah lupa terhadap penjelasan yang saya lakukan secara berulang kepada mereka. Hal ini nampak ketika menjawab ujian hanya secara singkat dan tidak mampu menjelaskan soal-soal uraian yang membutuhkan tanggapan pribadi siswa itu sendiri. Siswa tidak mampu berpikir kritis dan kreatif dalam menjawab soal-soal ujian. This kind of student experience is not the only one I have experienced, but all teachers also complain about the same thing. This was complained about by all teachers at the beginning of face-to-face meetings post-pandemic Covid-19.

The root of the problem in all of this is the lack of interest in reading and writing among students. Reading and writing are parts of literacy that have an important role in all subjects. Literacy can be defined as the ability to read, write, speak, and understand information in various life contexts. Therefore, literacy in schools needs to be improved. The main goal is to get students to read and write more, so that they can develop critical and creative thinking skills in everyday life, good at school, at home and in the community.

At the beginning of the year 2022, akhirnya saya diberikan tugas lain sebagai Staf Tata Usaha Bidang Multimedia dan Koordinator Literasi Sekolah. Di saat itulah, saya memulai usaha untuk mendorong siswa dan guru agar membiasakan diri dalam kegiatan membaca dan menulis. Dengan langkah ini, diharapkan wawasan guru dan siswa dapat berkembang dalam mencapai tujuan pendidikan nasional, yakni dalam mencerdaskan kehidupan bangsa.

Dalam mengembangkan literasi di sekolah, saya menghadapi beberapa kendala antara lain sebagaiberikut: 1) Rendahnya minat baca dan menulis dalam diri siswa; 2) Ketersediaan buku bacaan sastra di perpustakaan yang kurang memadai; 3) Kurangnya penataan lingkungan fisik sekolah yang kaya akan teks sehingga tidak mampu menarik minat dan memberikan kenyamanan; 4) Kekurangan strategi pembelajaran dari guru yang dapat memperkuat keterampilan literasi siswa; 5) Some teachers are reluctant to write on the grounds that writing scientific papers is not their job; 6) Besides that, I also face “rejection” from several teachers because they thought that this effort would increase their workload.

Even so, It has become my duty and responsibility as a teacher to increase understanding, think creatively, and critical in efforts to improve student learning achievement. I am determined to instill a culture of literacy in schools to achieve this goal.

Realizing the importance of cultivating literacy from an early age in the school environment in creating a critical young generation, creative and innovative, So I carried out several strategies or stages as follows:

A. Level of Study Preparation

1. Together with the school, students are required to read any literature during 15 minutes every morning before class starts.
2. Create a Literacy Tree that does not only contain information about book elements, but also invite students to write a short review of the book, with writing complexity adjusted to the level.
3. Creating a classroom wallboard that functions to contain and display student creativity in the form of poetry, Short story, Poem, and its kind.
4. Arranging and equipping the library so that it can help foster interest in reading and encourage student independence in learning. Teachers also provide learning experiences where students search for information independently, so they get used to coming to the library.
5. Holding a writing competition in commemoration of major national holidays, like the Indonesian Independence Day, Teacher's Day, Youth Pledge, and so on.
6. Create an interesting and neatly organized class reading corner, serves to store a collection of books to encourage students' interest in reading.
7. The process of increasing literacy in schools must start from the teachers themselves, namely by holding a competition to create scientific articles. From here, The teachers understand the concept of literacy well and implement it as a learning strategy in the classroom, which in turn will strengthen student literacy.
8. Students are invited to write literature which can begin by expressing the things closest to themselves, like personal experience. Writing freely is necessary to start the creative writing process, so that writers feel free to express themselves and find fun in writing. Students' creative ideas can be in the form of short stories or poetry.
9. The results of students' creativity are expressed in written form and then displayed on the class wall. Furthermore, These writings were selected and added to other works from the competition results, then edited for publication.

B. Project Implementation Level

In increasing students' critical and creative thinking power, and increasing teacher competency, So I gave a writing project with the following stages:

1. Socialize literacy programs to students and teachers through teacher meetings, announcements during morning assembly and through class media.
2. Then I give students a writing project with a period of one month to complete their work, both in the form of poetry and short stories that have been mutually agreed upon. While the writing project for teachers, We agreed together to write a scientific article that will be contested during Teachers' Day and the jury will come from the North Sumatra Region I Education Office..
3. The writing results of students and teachers were then assessed and the winners announced at the 77th Teacher's Day celebration
4. After that, I collected the work of students and teachers, then start editing the script and layout.
5. After the editing and layout process, the manuscript is sent to the publisher.
6. The process of sending a manuscript to a publisher until the book is published takes a long time 2 Week for student work and 3 month for the teacher's scientific work

In an effort to increase school literacy, finally we managed to publish 5 the book consists of 4 literary books created by middle and high school students, as well as 1 scientific work books written by teachers.

Through the Book Writing School Movement Program, SMP – Satu Padu High School Boarding School has been attending an active National Literacy school since 1995 2021. Besides that, we also succeeded and helped solve it 3 MURI record with Nyalanesia, namely as a contributor to the most fiction and non-fiction book launches in the year 2021 and Writing Training for Teachers and Students in Most Years of Schools 2022, and I entered 30 Adi Acarya Award nomination from 1.422 Participants in "Academics Writing Books" organized by Nyalanesia since January 2022 - December 2022. With the book published, students are increasingly motivated and enthusiastic to immortalize their work in published writing.

From the School Literacy program that we have implemented, Finally, we can see a significant change towards a more positive direction, as student creativity increases, especially in expressing their ideas in written form, Student test scores also increased, students are increasingly brave to speak and express their opinions because they are starting to become rich with vocabulary which makes them brave to speak and feel proud because they get recognition and appreciation for their work. Besides that, school name, Student and teacher writers are increasingly becoming widely known thanks to students' works being published in the form of books and improvements in school education report cards, especially in the field of Literacy and Numeracy. All of these changes have raised awareness of the importance of literacy in schools as a form of lifelong learning.