Mosaic 3

Therapy of reality
“To accompany the pupil up-to-dately”

“Children these days were hard to adjust and they do as they pleased, it is not like when I was just about them”. It was common word that we often heard when the teacher expressed their irritated mind upon their student – a judgment upon new generation lately. Or course, it was one without any chance of defend. It was worsen when this statement expressed at the teacher’s office, for the common statement would be expressed by the fellow teachers. Is this what we called “self-judgment” in our education?

In the Therapy of Reality Counseling Theory developed by William Glasser in Los Angeles California stated that men takes responsibility upon his behaviors. It was suggested that human had the ability to take decision and decide any choice about his life circumstances. These behaviors of human are as the expression of this ability. Furthermore for all of the human behavior there are some foundations, or often we called by context, Glasser called it needs.

Furthermore, Glasser described that human was enforced to fulfill their needs and wants. Everybody has the same needs in their life. But, every human had different wants for every individual. This “wants” is the basic of human’s uniqueness. The human behavior composed of action; mind and feeling that arise because there are differences between what ones want and one perception about what one get from their neighborhood thus arising certain behavior.

Youth nowadays is certainly undebatable different from the old one, thus the earlier mentioned statement should not be use as the basic of judgment. Hence, we can explore it from the basic of Reality Theory that children nowadays were different for their perception and want were differ from the one away back. One of the concrete examples was, the children away back were still filled with traditional toys while children nowadays so much close with sophisticated technology toys thus makes different of the context of era.

The differences of children nowadays and one away back was one the different evidence of behavior caused by what they want and the perception of what they get from their environment. With this basic of logic it was clear that this judgment should not happen while it was our mind set upon those nowadays that need to be changes. The Reality Theory tries to give one solution to create the new mindset with practical, directive and emphatic approach.

This reality theory tries to build ones awareness on every life reality through his/ her life experiences. The root of troubled behavior was the disability of the individual to fulfill his/her basic needs. This troubled behavior was always irrational. The reality theory helps the individual to face the reality and tries to fulfill his/her basic needs upon those realities. Thus, when the basic needs were fulfill the troubled behavior was stopped.

As a teacher, to deal with child nowadays was supposed to be seen as reality. To view the peculiar child behavior must be seen thoroughly the background the child, instead of verdict the child as naughty, dull, or any negative thing. If this child was truly troubled one, those act would not make them any better, instead it will worsen their behavior. When that happen, then who’s to blame?

It must be admitted that the process of accompanying the children in the field of education was not an easy task. The fact was, the teacher has already many burden in their task especially administration, and not to mentioned in dealing with his/her economy of his/her family. It was too complicated indeed the circumstances of the teacher upon their noble task to educated the life of the nation. To saw from this reality, its feel that being a teacher was not promising good future and become wealthy. For those with economical orientation, must immediately change to any profession promising for a lot of money. Yet if to become teacher not just teaching but educating then one must be ready to accompanying the children for the life of the lovely nation.

One basic matter that must be aware of that it is not only the duty or responsibility of guidance and counseling teacher to accompany the children through each of their field, but also the duty and responsibility of all teachers. Seeing the importance of accompaniment of the pupil which involved all of the educator, then it became real that the good education was not only the matter of developing cognitive ability, but also affective and psychomotor ability. In the other word, the good education is the education capable of creating shrewd children with lustrous and social concern, making the balance or their personality.

In order to accompany the children properly, The Reality Theory propose WDEP (wants, doings, evaluation, plans) strategy as the flexible structured setting in dealing with the troubled behavior children. In this setting there was nothing like punishment like in the psychodinamic approach. This strategy can always applied by the educator to continuously accompany the student in every occasion to avoid any “self judgment” act of the educator.

The essence of this strategy was to try to build a good relationship between the educator and pupil thus the pupil would felt comfortable and safe in expressing anything they felt to eventually compose some plans for their future. The relationship was no longer vertical but horizontal, or in the other word the educator was becoming their friend.
The effective thing to create this kind of relation was the educator to behave “up-to-date”. This up-to-date was not on the set of performance but attitude, that is to learn to enter the world and the mindset of the children and gradually directed them into the proper life. It was a challenge that we must ready to enter the world of comic, online game, mode, life style, cellular, sophisticated technology, and funky music. If the educator was not prepare for those things, then they were always be considered conservative, out of date by their student. This is the hard challenge and the life’s choice of the educator.