English Teachers’ Reflections and Lessons Learned in Language Teaching During COVID-19 Pandemic

: This study seeks to find out the English teachers’ reflections and lessons learned in language teaching during the pandemic. The method used was a guided narrative frame in which the teachers from the suburban wrote down their feelings and lived experiences. The data was analysed using thematic analysis and presented in themes. The findings indicate that the teachers found it challenging at the beginning of their online teaching. Both the teachers and students faced problems including economic situations, tech problems and mental struggles. Interestingly, this finding is similar to the outskirt teachers and students’problems. Besides, the teachers have learned the most vital things during their language teaching in the early year of the pandemic. They continuously shift their teaching strategies, provide personalised feedback to support the students’ engagement, and become adaptable teacher-learners. Suggestions are provided for both teachers and policymakers.


INTRODUCTION
Rapid and unanticipated change in English language teaching (ELT) has been the result of Covid-19 in the past year. The teachers and students are now housed for an unknown period due to the physical distancing due to the rapid infections.
The government has long before echoed the slow changing of learning into online learning but not all the teachers are yet ready to embrace the technology.
Although many studiespromote the use of technology in enhancing language learning (Harmer 2001;Eaton 2010;Gilakjani 2014), teachers do not seem to move an inch to utilise the technology in the classroom until Covid-19 sweeps.
The covid-19 outbreak has brutally forced the teachers to conduct class remotely as the classes are shut down. The teachers are crawling and expected to think quickly of how to keep the class going through the online platforms. Starting from very low-tech platforms like WhatsApp to contact students and give assignments to interactive platforms as Zoom and Google meet, teachers adapt to the new situation.
Instead of asking the students questions in class, teachers now ask the students to click on 'raise hand' in Zoom video conferencing. Common language teaching, usually based on vocabulary, grammatical exercise, and reading comprehension, is no longer relevant. Besides, the need for language evaluation has also been paramount howthe teacher is supposed to assess the students remotely.
Although there has been a slow introduction to blended learning (Gonzalez and St.Louis 2018), there is yet limited research onthe pandemic situation because it is a forced Majeure. Previous studies in the field of online learning during the COVID-19 outbreak has shown some striking findings. Cao et al.(2020)) finds that the sudden change from faceto-face learning into fully online education affects the students' development. Another study recently done in a rural area of Indonesia is by Atmojo and Nugroho (2020). By employing a qualitative study, they collected the written reflection from 16 participants and proceeded to interview 5 of them because they gave exciting reflection. The findings uncover that the unavailability of the money to buy internet data, the mountainous areas with limited coverage, and the students' unpreparedness for learning online activities are the triggers to skip the class. Reflecting on what Atmojo and Nugroho (2020)  There has been a lot of studies that have discussed the challenges faced by teachers in language teaching (Iswati 2021;Tukan 2020;Rosalina, Nasrullah, and Elyani 2020;Efriana 2021;Lie et al. 2020;Yuzulia 2021;Nugroho, Ilmiani, and Rekha 2021 Teachers' beliefs and attitudes are one of the most crucial factors in determining their challenges in language teaching Johnson et al. (2016). Their beliefs and attitudes will strongly influence how theylead the students during the Covid-19 outbreak.
A positive attitude most likely optimisesusing any means of technology in keeping the class going remotely. Teachers who are in the rural area sometimes find themselves without sufficient skill in English (Garton, Copland, and Burns 2011)as well as in using technology in their language teaching. Therefore, they are not confident and cannot control the class when using the technology. Those who believe that they lack skills and knowledge may end up using technology that they are comfortable with or, at worst, postpone until they are skilful enough.
The covid-19 outbreak has affected all sectors of education all over the world. In response to school closures, many language institutions like British Council, TESOL.org, and Pearson, book publishers like Springer even Amazon have offered supports to help teachers and students do remote learning. A lot of free ideas, guidance and resources are provided online for free. Free webinars from local to international organisations are also free to create the teaching and learn online classes. As the outbreak has now closed 177 countries leaving more than 1 billion students studying at home, language learning has experienced remodelling in its delivery.
Although it is salient to the researchers that there have been many online free webinars in helping teachers cope with the technology, it is debatable that the teachers face mounts of challenges of diving into the world of remote learning independently. In this respect, it is interesting to know what reflections and what lessons learned through this past year by teachers. This research is prominent as covid-19 has impacted the future of language teaching.

METHODS
This research is design in a qualitative framework. The sampling used was a total sampling of 30 secondary English teachers under the collaboration with the private university in which the researcherswork. However, due to the saturation of the data, only half of the participants' data were analysed. Furthermore, data saturation which is Therefore, the participants were free to write down their feelings without feeling intimidated. The data was analysed using thematic analysis inductively, where coding and the development of the theme were generated from the data (Braun and Clarke 2006). The process went through familiarising the data, coding, establishing initial themes, naming themes, and writing up.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
The findings are presented within the themes and followed by the discussion.

Findings 2.0.1 Teachers' Reflections a. Economic Situation
The findings indicated that both students and teachers stumbled over the economic condition when it came to online learning. Furthermore, the participants in this research exposed that Zoom and Google meet were not easy because the students did not have internet data and did not own media like laptops or suitable mobile phones.

Some of my students could not join the meeting because of the limited internet data. Zoom app needs a strong network and spends a lot of data (Participant 2)
Some of the students did not have cell phones or smartphones. They were still borrowing their parents' phones. When I gave them tasks, their parents complained that the task was overwhelming (Participant 3) My students' parents visited me and told me that they did not have money to buy internet data and asked me to give the material using the written form (Participant 6)

I must manage my own money because to operate online learning. Ineeded good internet access (Participant 7)
The students did not have the required electronic media needed for online learning (Participant 14) The excerpts showed that it had not been easy to shift to online learning because the students and the teachers were not ready with the internet and laptop to support online learning.

b. Tech-problem
In thefollowing reflections, teachers expressed that the students and the teachers were challenged to use the tech and suitable apps in online learning during the early pandemic. As they were used to the variety of face-to-face methodology, they were left in anxiety when shifting to online learning. Students and teachers equally faced this condition.

c. Mental struggles
The following findings regarding the teachers' reflections were the mentality regarding online learning. As the students were remotely placed from their classroom and seated at their homes, mental problems did arise, including shock, tiredness, integrity, and home situation.
My mentality was overwhelmed, and it was difficult to accept this kind of situation. Teaching from home was boring, and I missed my students (Participant 3) I typically could not see the screen for a long time. Now, I had to read thetasks slowly as they collected them in Word and Pdf doc (Participant 12) My students did not focus on the material. Theywere busy with their social media like WhatsApp and Instagram (Participant 15) When I gave the students assignment, they would just cheat on their friends or copied the answers from the internet. They were increasingly lazy in reading and losing self-confidence (Participant 5)

I found my students lost focus as a baby was crying in his house (Participant 7)
These excerpts showcased that learning online from home due to pandemics had posed a mental attack to both teachers and students. The data indicated pandemic and home learning situations contributed to the failure in maintaining their previous principles.

Lessons Learned a. Shifting Learning Strategies
One year of having a roller-coaster teaching situation through the pandemic, the teachers have survived the challenge in online learning, and they learn to cope with their current situation. The teachers have reflected through the first year of the pandemic and now apply various strategies in their classes. These shifts include the extended deadlines, variations of material delivery, availability of learning videos, and the utilisation of social media. The participants are optimistic about their current situation as they are striving to be more creative and innovative in delivering material through online learning. These findings prove that teachers never stop learning.

Discussion
The Similarly, three themes are generated from the teachers' story, namely 1) shifting learning strategies, giving personalised feedback, and becoming teacherlearner.
The first factor -reflections generated a quite  (Atmojo and Nugroho 2020;Nugroho, Ilmiani, and Rekha 2021). Another similarity is that the students' phones are a family asset, so learning is becoming more complex (Rosalina, Nasrullah, and Elyani 2020).The only difference is that the suburban has enough network they need, unlike those in suburban who live in mountainous areas. In this case, it is a universal problem in Indonesia. Therefore, we cannot generalize that students in sub-urban have better economic situations than those in the outskirt.
Besides, the tech problem is also not uncommon in this study. Almost all the participants in this study complain regarding using technology to teach in an online class. They admit that before the pandemic, they hardly use even PowerPoint slides when teaching. Therefore, when faced with the face-to-face class shutdown, they must move to Zoom and Google Meet, which is strange. Some teachers cannot deliver the material because Zoom is a whole new world. Not only the teachers but also the students are overwhelmed. They could not speak or listen to their teacher because they do not know where the audio button to turn on the audio. These Meanwhile, the students find it hard to study without control. Learning at home alone leads them to play with gadgets, even during the online zoom video call with their teachers (Efriana 2021).
They also lost interest in doing their task. Instead of working independently to do their task, they prefer to copy other's tasks or even from internet sources.
In addition, the home situation is not conducive for studying. A teacher in this study reveals that she could hear noises such as a baby crying when having the online session. This condition demotivates students and is a challenge for online learning (Rosalina, Nasrullah, and Elyani 2020). The learning method is adjusted by making group discussions, given extended deadlines to the tasks, and offering fewer tasks but more challenging. One teacher is found to bring the students into a discovery learning where they are asked to find a case related to the topic and think about the solution to solve a problem. The point is that they are giving doable tasks but with ore impact (Iswati 2021 Though the pandemic has been drawing tears from both teachers and learners at the beginning of the online learning implementation, it is safe to say that both have now get used to it and live with it.
The teachers mainly have reflected and learnt a lot.
They have also embraced the situation by not giving up on the economic, tech, and mental struggles they faced. As a result, they change their learning styles, give personalized feedback, and keep learning each day and every day. They also gain confidence and, at the same time, enhance their commitment, raise their awareness and competence (Lie et al. 2020;Iswati 2021). The teachers are professionals in the show each day, and they know what they do.

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
The study has been about the teachers' reflections and lessons learned during the early year of pandemic situations where the participants are teachers from the suburban. The findings, however, reveal that there are no significant differences between the teachers in the suburban and the outskirt as previous study and the current study show that their problems Centre around the economic situation, tech-problem, and mental struggles.
However, the teachers have indeed transformed themselves through the ups and downs of online learning. Failing with one teaching method does not stop teaching. Instead, they change their learning strategies to meet the students need and support them to get the best out of the learning. They also give personalized feedback that aims to embrace the students' engagement rather than achievement.
Lastly, the teachers position themselves as learners ready to adapt to any possibilities to create a creative, fun, and engaging classroom.
Therefore, in light of the findings, which also radiate other studies' findings, this study provides suggestions to two main actors in the education system, including the teachers and the policymakers.
The teachers have done their best through this time by learning how to organize their class. They deserve applause. In this case, they are expected to keep on learning so they can better support their students.
Therefore, it is highly suggested that they keep following the available training to help them with more updated learning styles. On the other hand, the policymakers need to provide training that allows the teachers to organize the classes and give the media they need to conduct online classes because many teachers have to buy their laptops. Best education quality comes from the best preparation.