English Club Teaches More than a Language

My students can be a range of different things. Maditra (disobedient), tsara (good), mitabataba (loud) and hafahafa (funny) are just a few descriptions that come to mind.

Every student I teach is important to me in some way, and more then anything else, I want to see them succeed. That’s not to say I don’t have favorites.

There is a group that is very dear to me; students who have shown me an unbridled sense of kindness, combined with wonder and desire to learn English, that have made my work in Madagascar far more rewarding then I could have imagined. These 25 students have shown me that they want to learn more then just English; they really want to learn about America, and what we represent.

Where do we all find this extra time to really get at the heart of my mission here, you may ask? In a fantastic little place I like to call, English Club.

I’m really proud of my English Club. Every Wednesday afternoon, 25 over the 175 6eme students I teach join me for an hour to learn more than just grammar and vocabulary. Even more so than in the classroom, I become a true entertainer for these kids.

English Club is about singing, dancing, games and, most importantly, reading. For a bunch of 10-13 year olds, it’s really amazing how much they want to read, especially given the alternative options.

That has a lot to do with the lack of textbooks in this country’s public school system. There are none. Teachers here do more than just teach, they write a textbook every year for their hundreds of students.

Everything a student can learn in Madagascar comes from the teacher’s mouth and goes into their kahie (notebook). It’s hard to find any books in this country, and newspapers will more often than not serve as toilet paper to the majority of a family. What happens in Antananarivo does not matter to the farmer working in the countryside, so why read about it, even if he could?

My English Club students are different. Before the singing, dancing and games, the English Club in Ankazobe acted as more of a library. One of the first Peace Corps projects was putting together a fantastic English library in the school.

It really is amazing what my predecessors have left me to work with. From the simplest children’s books (Bernstein Bears, oh my!) on through teenage book series, all the way up to some true classics of Western literature (All Along the Western Front), these kids have entire worlds before them.

As excited as I may be to start discussions on Emerson and Whitman, I want these kids to understand the inherent fun in learning English. So for now, we’ll dance the Hokey Pokey, sing “Working on the Railroad” and play “What time is it, Mr. Fox?”

Entertaining them is what I do. After all, they’re my kids.