When All You Have is a Box of Chalk

At this public middle school, we have no photocopiers. No CD players and kitschy audio clips. No overhead projectors. No textbooks for the students. A library with roughly a dozen outdated English novels. No Internet. Electricity amounts to one naked light bulb in each classroom and a single computer that stays unused and hidden under a sheet to keep dust from collecting on it. Teachers are armed with little more than a box of chalk and a chalkboard; students carry only a stack of flimsy notebooks, rulers, and an array of different-colored pens. Out of necessity, we spend half the class copying information from the board, essentially transforming students’ notebooks into textbooks. Grammar exercises take twice as long because the students must first copy the exercise from the board before doing it. Welcome to public school in small-town Madagascar.

Schools like this in one of the more “well-off” highland towns in Madagascar present challenges most Westerners – including myself – have never before coped with. The simplicity of resources render familiar classroom staples, such as handouts, educational videos, workbook activities, and silent reading idealistic and about as foreign as the language we’ve set out to teach.

So how can we teach with less?

Create your own visual aids. Simple cartoon strips or one-panel scenes to accompany texts are extremely useful for drawing in student’s attention, checking understanding, and contextualizing the lesson. Large sheets of flip-chart paper are often available in bigger cities. For less artistically inclined, invest in a picture dictionary or scrounge markets for posters, maps, or every day items (in teacher-terms, realia) – anything to illustrate your lesson.

Build a collection of PDF file textbooks and grammar resources for yourself. These can be crucial when you’re wondering “what the heck is the present perfect simple anyways?” and don’t have WiFi to Google it. I highly recommend Betty Azar’s Basic English Grammar from Longman, which even includes practice exercises for the creativity-drained teacher. For many native speakers, who know English intrinsically, we’re learning alongside our students.

Act out scenarios rather than showing videos. It’s helpful to write the dialogue on the board, exaggerate emotions, and use props that differentiate which character you are speaking as (such as a hat, scarf, or sunglasses). This also allows students a chance to practice speaking by acting out the dialogues – a rare opportunity in overcrowded classrooms typical of developing nations.

Utilize large class sizes by incorporating group work into your lessons. It may seem scary, but by giving each group an observable thing to produce with the activity (like creating a poster or performing a skit), and each member a role, you can keep your class from erupting into chaos. Start with a small activity towards the end of class.

Embrace your creativity and the opportunity to develop relevant lessons. Set stories in your town, and cater texts to students’ interests. As an ESL teacher in rural Benin once put it:

What’s the point of teaching a kid how to say ‘trombone’ when they don’t even know what one is?

Lack of resources isn’t the only challenge…

Unfortunately, trying to create educational magic with a bag of chalk has been the most conquerable obstacle. More difficult are the lack of critical thinking exercises in the national curriculum and managing classes of 45-100+ (noisy) students. Working in poorer conditions with little is undoubtedly tough for both students and teachers, but by no means impossible. Rarely are our classrooms ideal classrooms, but in the end they always become our own.

Volunteer and Teaching Opportunities in Madagascar

• The Ladybug Project: Works in Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, and Madagascar to advance healthcare and education and offer intern and volunteer placements and college credit compensation. Preference given for volunteers in country.
• Graines de Bitume: A French organization based in the capitol, Antananarivo, which helps keep children off the street with volunteer opportunities available.