I somewhat naively thought that
my time as a teacher in Paris was stressful, that the kids were badly behaved
and that there needed to be more support. All of this went straight out of the
window after my first week teaching in Madagascar. I was surprised to learn on
day one that there wasn’t a paid adult member of staff running the teaching
program (as there was with marine conservation and forest conservation). This
led to various issues as you can imagine.
There were two lovely interns (volunteers
who’d stayed on longer and become staff) Julia and Mackenzie who did all they
could to keep things running as smoothly as possible. However, they both left
during my time there, leaving one newer intern in charge of the whole program.
I feel like this is a massive oversight by MRCI (the organisation I was working
for out there). The absence of a co-ordinator led to a lack of leadership and a
general problem with continuity, as each intern brought their own ideas and
approach. I’m hoping in the next few months they realise the need to have a
TEFL trained, experienced teacher in charge of the program, otherwise I worry
about its future.
In my first week or so we were
taught basic Malagasy, classroom commands and the verbs we would need to
communicate. I’d like to think that I picked up quite a lot, but it was not
enough! There were many frustrating times where I was trying to discipline
unruly children, either by myself or with a friend (there was never a Malagasy
teacher in the room with you), and quite frankly ‘be quiet’, ‘listen’ and ‘sit
down’ are not enough.
In order to explain part way what
the situation was like, imagine a substitute teacher coming in to teach French
but that was they only language they spoke plus 20 words of English. You would
just take the p**s, and this is what happened quite a lot in the children’s
classes. It made me want to cry with frustration sometimes. How can you be
expected to teach with such a profound language barrier?
Of course it improved slightly over the 8 weeks I was there, and there were some children’s classes that went really, really well and I left feeling a great sense of achievement. But on the whole, I have to admit I didn’t enjoy teaching the kids classes of which there were five: one in the bigger town of Nosy Be, Hellville, one in the village of Andrekareka Hely, two in the village of Ampangorina and one in a school called Banana. Each one was just as crazy and hard to control as the other, and it made me realise I would be rubbish as a Primary School teacher.
Of course it improved slightly over the 8 weeks I was there, and there were some children’s classes that went really, really well and I left feeling a great sense of achievement. But on the whole, I have to admit I didn’t enjoy teaching the kids classes of which there were five: one in the bigger town of Nosy Be, Hellville, one in the village of Andrekareka Hely, two in the village of Ampangorina and one in a school called Banana. Each one was just as crazy and hard to control as the other, and it made me realise I would be rubbish as a Primary School teacher.
The adults’ classes however, were
amazing! There were five adult classes too, in the pretty much the same locations
as the children’s. Adults came to classes voluntarily which made a world of
difference: they were interested, they asked questions about grammar and
colloquialisms, and their progress in two months was an absolute pleasure to
see.
My favourite class was at a
museum called CNRO, there was a mixture of beginners and more advanced
students, never more than eight people, and they were all lovely! We read
articles in magazines, learned song lyrics, focused on idiomatic phrases and of
course lots of grammar. These classes made me realise how little I actually
know about grammar and tenses in particular, I still struggle with the
difference between ‘I watched tv’, ‘I have watched tv’ and ‘I was watching tv’!
All I know is that they’re in the past! Think I need a TEFL course.
I think that’s everything on
teaching! If anyone has any questions let me know!
Thank you so much for reading
Han xxx
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