Carrying the Mount to Madagascar

By Nathaniel Bald, C’21

AS PART OF THE FIRST Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA) cohort in Madagascar, my colleagues and I often get invited to special events and clubs as guest speakers on topics ranging from American culture and regional accents to strange idioms and whether they’re pronouncing words correctly. Nonetheless, what most Malagasy English teachers are interested in is my role as a Fulbright ETA and any differences I have found between education in the United States and Madagascar. In fact, those are also the most popular questions I receive from friends and family back in the States. So let me share my most useful insight.

My primary job as a Fulbright ETA is to teach 19 different classes at Lycée Jean Joseph RABEARIVELO (LJJR), a high school located in the very center of Madagascar’s capital city, Antananarivo. I only see each class for an hour a week, plus any of the students that attend the weekly English club during Tuesday’s lunch period. I focus the classes on speaking and listening, something which Malagasy English teachers are desperate to have. High school in Madagascar is 10th through 12th grade, the names of which, in order, are seconde, première and terminal. These grades are optional, as Malagasy students who complete the ninth grade exiting exam are not required to continue their education and finish high school by passing the baccalaureate, an extremely long and stressful exam that lasts a week in July every year. My 19 classes are spread across the three grades, but I usually teach the same lesson for each class, adjusting the difficulty as necessary.

I have observed many differences between education in the United States and Madagascar, but here I will focus on one major dissimilarity: the classroom itself. In the United States, teachers typically receive their own rooms where they hopefully invest time and resources in making it a welcoming, useful and open learning environment. If done properly, a classroom in the United States is as much as a teaching tool as are handouts and homework. Walls are filled with conjugation charts, mathematic formulas, historic timelines, quirky comics, and all other visual aids that just scream, “this is a place of learning!" More importantly, it suggests that there is an ongoing pedagogical shift from a teacher-centered approach to a student-centered approach in the United States.

That’s not the case in Madagascar where classrooms are large (or sometimes small), consisting of a single large (or small) and sometimes shattered blackboard, a small wooden stage in front of the blackboard, a teacher’s desk and chair at the front of the room, and row after row of heavy, clunky, barely functioning desks only big enough to hold two students but very often carrying three. Students are packed in like sardines in a tin can while the teacher, who moves from classroom to classroom because students don’t move from their assigned room, writes on the board, distributes handouts, and lectures indefinitely. It has not been uncommon for me to show up to class to find the teacher before me had decided his or her class would last another hour, meaning it’s back to the teachers’ room for me to practice my Malagasy.

In contrast to the American classroom, which is moving toward a student-centered methodology, Malagasy classrooms are literally designed for teacher-centered approaches. Everything about the room and the teachers points toward a structured and rigid approach where the teacher is the provider of knowledge and students are to receive that knowledge and then repeat it when commanded. What about applying that knowledge in a form of critical thinking? What?! Are you crazy? That’s not how we do things here.

This leads me to the second part of my role as a Fulbright ETA: that of building the education capital of English teaching in Madagascar by investing in Malagasy English teachers. One of the goals of the U.S. Embassy is to create a network of English teachers and English teaching trainers across the country, which, if I might add, is nearly impossible to navigate with the lack of infrastructure. The Embassy does this by training English teachers, Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) facilitators, and English club moderators. They bring teachers and trainers from all over Madagascar to the capital where they host conferences, workshops and training programs. These newly certified educators go back to their regions to begin implementing the new TESOL student-centered teaching methodologies amongst their English teaching peers—and hopefully inspire educators in other fields to do the same.

Thus, the second, and my favorite aspect of my role is to aid and assist in this training process. One of the reasons I absolutely love this part of my job is because it vividly reminds me of what I learned at the Mount, and I can see the profound effects and immense benefits my education is now producing as I invest in other educators. I’m passionate about education, human formation and applying my knowledge of economics and languages to those fields. In Mount CARiTAS, the Mount looks at ways that we can serve those who serve. How do we empower, enable, and support others who work directly with students and in the community to make them more effective, efficient and motivated educators?

Likewise, I love visiting MOOC camps, English clubs and all other kinds of conferences and workshops. By doing so, we are investing in people and educators who will go on to make a bigger difference than I ever could as a solo teacher in a classroom of 40-50 Malagasy students scared out of their minds as I dynamically move around the classroom and have them do group work, something totally foreign to them because they have only ever experienced teacher-centered approaches.

This kind of experience is uplifting and generates a lot of hope. Teachers and trainers recently instructed in student-centered TESOL methodologies leave the capital energized and empowered, ready to conquer all the challenges they face. More importantly in my opinion, they know that they are not alone. They are part of a national community of English educators all dedicated to the goal of educating their students and passing on knowledge, wisdom and critical-thinking skills that will be used in creating a brighter future for Madagascar and the Malagasy people.

So in short, when I’m asked what I’m doing in Madagascar, I like to summarize it as, “well, I teach English because I’m an educator in the faith, serving those who serve that we may be better educators together." Or in the paraphrased words of St. Francis de Sales, I am being who I am meant to be, and doing it well that I may bring honor to the Master Craftsman whose handiwork I am. And what is more touching to me is that I get to bring along all the lessons I learned from my mountain home. Lessons which, I have learned, fill others with hope, Spes Nostra.

Interested in Reading More?

Nathaniel Bald has documented his year in Madagascar on his blog, A Time of Silence With the Ancestors, at nfbald.wixsite.com