A Perfect Score!

A letter from Jan Heckler serving in Madagascar

Fall 2015

Vololona hesitates.  The answer, if she can correctly provide it, will mean she has passed her test with no errors, something she has been working hard to accomplish.  Now, with 66 correct answers successfully provided by her in less than the last 16 minutes, she needs just one more to pass with a perfect score and a “rate correct” faster than graduate students averaged at the University of Florida.

Vee, as she is affectionately called, is 48, married, and has three children including twin girls!  She works for the Church of Jesus Christ (or FJKM as it is abbreviated in Malagasy), the PC(USA)’s partner church in Madagascar.  As the Deputy Project Administrator, she is my “counterpart” for the EBMI (Evidence Based Methods of Instruction) Project.

Vololona Rasoavelonirina,
Deputy Project Administrator

This ambitious systemic transformation is aiming to share especially effective methods of teaching and arrangements with nearly 3,000 FJKM teachers nationwide.  This is a major, multiyear changeover effort for how the teachers “teach” in their classrooms, increasing engagement by learners with lots of feedback, something research time and again implicates as a major factor in human learning.  The teachers will develop skills in arranging optimal classroom environments—even with underfunded limitations intact—so that learners thrive and are successful.  Vee’s role will be evolving as she becomes my successor and the next Project Administrator, thus providing for a sustainable continuity and complete indigenous direction of the effort.

Vee is well traveled, having gone to eight foreign lands (including Brazil, Taiwan, and three European countries) to cover stories for the somewhat famous FJKM radio station before it was shut down with military might during the brunt of the coup d’état in 2009.  Though a number of radio staff were summarily arrested at the time, Vee was on assignment and avoided being caught.  Only recently did the radio station reopen for broadcast business, but Vee, though she was offered her old spot, refused, choosing instead to remain with the EBMI Project—an effort we hope will improve the quality of life of hundreds of thousands of learners in the FJKM school system and contribute mightily before all is said and done to addressing poverty, one of the PC(USA)’s Critical Global Issues (CGIs).

Teachers at Betela Ambodimita FJKM primary school study materials provided to them by the EBMI PROJECT.

The focus of the EBMI Project right now is on Vee’s and four Teacher-Trainer/Coaches’ professional development.  Not only is everyone expected to do exceptionally well in their classroom preparation, but they will also work hard in the classroom alongside FJKM teachers, their learners, and a steady stream of curricular challenges.  Keeping learners successful is one of the fundamental strategic goals of EBMI and Vee’s flurry of accurate and timely replies to questions as she reads them aloud brings a smile to both our faces.  She and I both know that “rate correct” is a measure of strength of her knowledge.  Just as we easily complete in seconds a form asking for information about our name, age and address, other things we know very well can be uttered without hesitation.

The test Vee is taking is in English, her third language, a fact that makes her high rate of correct replies all the more simply fantastic to witness.  I have trained literally hundreds of others in EBMI in three other countries and her performance thrills me more than any I can remember.  She has already surpassed my every hope with the penetrating and insightful questions she asks of me regarding the material so far covered, and her quick answers to practical and conceptual problems that I pose is most reassuring.

Now, as she purses her lips to consider one more instant how she will respond to this final question, a heartbeat within getting a perfect score on the final unit, I am so proud of her.  If only she can answer correctly, it will be her fourth errorless performance in a row!

Madagascar. The world’s 4th largest island is shown above, not 250 miles off the Mozambique coastline

I don’t get to have stellar successes like Vee’s astounding academic performance to observe every day. (Yes!  She got it right and scored her fourth consecutive errorless unit performance!!)  But the struggle of good people like Vee against a host of pressing life problems and realities, including their poverty, is daily observed—including hunger and malnourishment (Madagascar has one of the highest rates of malnourishment in the world), infrastructural decline (Madagascar has one of the worst “clean water and sanitation” problems in the world), and economic decline (as many as 23 of every 25 Malagasy must try to live on $2/day or less).

Your gifts of prayer and financial support are what make the PC(USA)’s partnership with churches like FJKM and our presence in Madagascar possible.  You are here with Vee and the learners and the teachers of FJKM because you have enabled me to be here!

I thank you for the generous outpouring of support that an increasing number of you have provided.  Still, more is needed if this work is to continue.  Our current reality remains that Presbyterian World Mission is struggling with a huge financial deficit and needs your help urgently if our work is going to continue.

Please, if you are able, consider making a gift in support of our mission in Madagascar.  And if you have already given, please consider increasing your gift, of whatever sort it may be.  I will be most grateful.  Thanks be to God for the privilege of serving, and many thanks to each of you who supports and accompanies me on this awesome life-transforming journey.

Jan Heckler

The 2015 Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 154