93 colleagues. Luckily, their coworkers were willing enough to share their similar
experience at the first time they started to work. Even they would share their strategies to cope with certain problems in the classroom.
Third, family was also one of the support providers for Kiki and Jalu to pass their crucial period in working as a teacher. Family was the entrusted and
unalterable place the share what they experienced, what they felt towards the experience, and what they wanted actually. Family was a place to pour out their
hearts and minds. Moreover, family was the endless source of support and encouragement for the novice teachers in undergoing their teaching career.
Fourth, Kiki and Jalu‟s perceived self-efficacy was one of their personal
supports which helped them to cope with problems in their initial period of teaching. They believed that they had the capacity to pass the crucial period and to
cope with problems and challenges in it. Because of their perceived self-efficacy, they could pass it and could survive as English teachers at the primary level.
6. Struggle and adaptation
During their initial time of teaching, Jalu and Kiki faced with reality shock and problems. Thus they needed to learn to adapt and to survive. Richards and
Farrel 2005 mentioned that in dealing with their problems, novice teachers might employ their individual strategies. According to Richards and Farrel 2005
novice teachers‟ individual strategies were reflection, self-directed learning, and taking part in teacher support group. In order to cope with problems arose in their
initial period of teaching, as novice teachers, Jalu and Kiki also employed their own or individual strategies. Based on their lived experience as novice English
94 teachers at the primary level, it could be elucidated that they employed these
following strategies: learning by doing; finding what works best; and joining training.
Their first strategy was learning by doing. They employ this strategy when they had to deal administrative works which they did not know before. Since they
never learnt how to develop annual program, semester program, syllabus, and any other administrative works, they learnt it from the examples. They tried to grasp
the concept of those administrative works and then applied it and made it by themselves. This strategy could be seen as their self-directed learning because in
dealing with administrative works, these novice teachers initiatively and responsibly learn from the examples, grasp the main idea, and then applied it in
order to develop the administrative works. The second strategy was finding what works best. When Kiki and Jalu
faced with the problem of classroom noisiness and chaos, they tried to find strategies to handle it which match with themselves and their students. They did
not easily adopt other teachers‟ strategies. Even when they found their own strategies, Jalu and Kiki needed to checked whether those strategies was
applicable or not for themselves and their class. The applicable strategies were then being used. For the strategies which did not work well were being improved.
In this case, Jalu and Kiki did what so-called self-reflection in which they examined by themselves what strategies were applicable and worked best in their
classroom.
95 The third strategy was joining training or taking part in teacher support
group. However, this strategy was only being employed by Kiki because Jalu had not got the opportunity yet to join such training. By join GLDPN training, Kiki
got a lot of new knowledge and skills to cope with her daily problem in teaching English to young learners. Kiki were being trained about how to have good
classroom management and how to teach by using certain teaching method which can interest and attract students to learn and can help students to learn better.
Hence, after joining such training, Kiki was able to develop her professional that was to perform better in her employment.
7. Current belief
