I still remember my first coming to the class, I asked the seventh grade students a question, "Do you like English?" and "Tell me why you like or dislike it? One by one of them raised their hands and shared their thoughts. Most of them were interested to learn English, even though they thought it is a difficult language to learn. Instead, a male student was identified not to know even the basic English yet. He firmly said that, " I don't like English because I don't learn English before and I know nothing about English, He replied me in Acehnese language, his mother tongue language, confidently without having any guilty. He tried to make a joke by responding to my questions until I suddenly realized that how different this student was.
Since then, I was quite interested to know him more and more. I tried to care about him more than his other friends and approached him outside of the classroom. I frequently talked to him face to face or even just wanted to greet him in every single moment at the school. Time by time, we spent a lot of time to discuss everything in front of the class in the morning before his teacher comes and asks him to get in the classroom. He asked me very often about how to do speech well in GOW program. He also didn't mind to spend a couple of time to practice speech in English with me or his classmates. What a change of him! As a result, I felt that he is very closed to me right now. And the most important thing that he shows me his enthusiastic in learning English. I do not really expect that he must have a very good skill in practicing English, but at least, he wanna voluntarily and happily join all in-class activities like other students do.
Related to that case, Once I have ever read a book "Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire" which written by an American teacher named Rafe Esquith (2007). I was inspired of his amazing experiences in teaching his students of Room 56. One of the stories in the book was about how a teacher treated his naughty and untidy student in the class. He had a big bag which full of untidy stuffs and papers inside so that the teacher wanted to change his bad habit by asking all of his classmates to throw all of their rubbish into this student's bag. He got angry to the teacher and the parents did too. They sued the teacher of doing that such deed for their son. Actually, the teacher truly didn't mean to punish the student, but he wanted him to have a change to be tidier and cleaner so that everyone could respect him better than before.
In short, it happened because the teacher cared about his special need student very much. However, his good attention was meant nothing when he expressed nothing to the boy he helped. What an ironic!
So for all teachers here, caring about our students more and more can successfully increase their motivation in learning. Our students are not robots, but they have feelings and thoughts to express. They will not learn what they don't want to learn. Also, this is one of the criteria of a good teacher, or a creative teacher (Cremin, 2003) because they are able to recognize their students well, get involved easily , and engage emotionally with them in every moment during the school time.
