Transforming the Classroom Into a Room for Healing: How Teachers Support Refugee Learners in Nigeria

Izuchukwu Light Chime, Lagos, Lagos State, Nigeria

In my current position as teacher educator, I support teachers working with refugees and internally displaced learners in Nigeria in regions affected by conflict and insecurity. Many learners come from the northern part of the country and are educated in community centres, public schools and some temporary education programmes organised by non-governmental organisations in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps.

I have witnessed first-hand how teachers of refugees in my country work with limited resources and a high sense of responsibility that transcends any course they have been taught at university. In this part of the world, a classroom is not just a room in a college or school. It is a room where teachers navigate students’ stories of pain, trauma and a thin thread of hope as thousands of refugees and internally displaced learners strive to rebuild their lives through education. Behind every lesson plan and activity is a story of resilience, creativity, empathy, trauma and hope. It includes the challenges educators face and the strategies they use to transform classrooms into a small haven of hope for their learners. In this article, I seek to expose some of the realities teachers of refugees experience in Nigeria.  

Diversity is a central feature of the classrooms of teachers with whom I work. Their students range from primary to secondary school age and come with rich linguistic heritage, speaking languages like Hausa, Kanuri, Arabic or sometimes French from time spent in nearby countries. Some students speak extensively in their local dialects, and their English language vocabulary is still emerging. Many teachers have basic knowledge of these indigenous languages and embed translanguaging practices with their students. For those who don’t, they ensure they seek the resources needed to make learning accessible to everyone in the classroom. One of the teachers, Mr Idoho, explained how his school pays a translator every week to translate some concepts to students who struggle to follow instruction in English. 

The students’ educational histories also vary greatly. Some have never attended formal school before displacement, some have missed valuable years of schooling, while others have literacy only in their mother tongue. Beyond their educational histories, most of them are also dealing with trauma, separation from their families or the deaths of close ones, which affects their behaviour and attitude to learning. 

A teacher narrated an incident that happened recently. She was teaching in one of the rural schools when a gunshot was heard from a burial ceremony nearby. One of the students was in a panic and immediately hid under the table. Apparently, the student remembered a violent situation she had experienced earlier. Trauma affects learning by reducing concentration, increasing anxiety and fear, which makes it difficult for children to focus, regulate emotions, and build relationships. This, in turn, affects their ability to follow instruction effectively in a classroom environment (Frieze, 2015).

Teaching displaced learners has other unique challenges. For instance, many learners don’t have access to educational programming daily. This means that there is no structured learning program or curriculum for them. They also have little or no contact with teachers and a consistent school system. As a result, many students experience academic delays as they are unable to make progress at the same pace as their peers who face more stable conditions. Interrupted education has serious repercussions on the learner. An instance is the story of a teenager who, despite having the ability to succeed, could not gain admission into higher education alongside his peers because his village was attacked before the national examination, and he missed an entire year of schooling. It took him an additional three years to finally achieve entry, with the aid of an NGO.

In contexts of displacement in my country, teachers usually run weekly or biweekly shifts and partner with NGOs to work with learners due to a scarcity of teachers in the field. Poor working conditions, insecurity and meagre salary are some of the reasons many teachers do not teach refugee students.  Another significant challenge is the pressure to support refugees in catching up academically while meeting their psychosocial needs under constrained conditions and resources such as large group sizes, limited digital and material resources and unstable internet access. These conditions can make it difficult to provide appropriate learning support to students with diverse needs.

Imagine, for instance, an overcrowded classroom with a limited teacher-to-learner ratio, multilingual learners speaking different languages with English as their medium of instruction, limited or no access to the internet and some learners experiencing psychosocial issues. In this classroom, the teacher is expected to deliver content based on unrealistic curricula and educational policies while helping these learners to navigate socioemotional difficulties. The teacher may also be displaced, underpaid and lack the necessary training to feel fully prepared or able to handle the responsibility that comes with teaching refugees. Yet, these teachers give their best and sacrifice their pain to help their students achieve dreams of a better life.

A teacher, Mrs Faithia, recently shared that her years of experience have taught her that trauma-informed pedagogy is a crucial strategy for teachers to use in classrooms with refugees. Trauma-informed pedagogy is an approach that promotes student emotional safety in learning (Carello & Butler, 2015). Mrs Faithia admitted that when she started, she interpreted most students' classroom behaviour, such as sleeping, constant disruptions and laughing, as a lack of motivation. At the time, she had wanted her students to understand every concept at all costs, without comprehending how alien some academic concepts were to her learners. Coupled with the psychological traumas most of them were going through, which they could not explain, she could not understand why they found it difficult to participate actively in her lessons.  After reading online and discussing with other experienced practitioners in the field, she began to recognise that the expressed behaviour was often a form of trauma-based communication. The first step for her was transitioning from asking, “What is wrong with this learner?” to asking, “What has this learner experienced?” This shift influenced her classroom routines and expectations, as she focused on creating a safe classroom climate before honing in on conceptual learning. She focused on creating predictable and consistent routines. Whenever there was a need for change, she told students ahead of time and explained the reason to reduce anxiety. 

Another teacher, Miss Dabba, who often had to engage the services of a native translator, started to acknowledge what an asset her learners’ linguistic repertoires were. Allowing her students to blend their first language with English, she started encouraging translanguaging (Baker & Wright, 2017) and bilingual peer support during her lessons. An example this teacher shared is having learners discuss in pairs before presenting in English. She also encourages them to speak or mix English with their native language to overcome stage fright when presenting. This builds their confidence and encourages them to make mistakes too. Another tip she shared is to integrate mixed-proficiency groups whenever possible, where more proficient English speakers support their peers using either the shared local language or English. 

Another strategy that has worked with refugee learners, according to teachers I work with, is chunking and inserting multimodal content. For instance, Mrs Moshood uses multimodal inputs such as pictures and short videos to chunk the learning process for refugee learners in her context. Her favourite strategy, however, is the integration of art and storytelling in the lessons. In one lesson, she used a picture story of the Tortoise and the Hare, which she designed on Canva to get the students to practise their speaking. The resources are curated from stories like African folktales that students are familiar with and tell the story of resilience, void of elements that can retraumatise the learners. In these lessons, multilingual scaffolding is integrated as glossaries or key vocabulary in English and the major local language. Texts created within familiar contexts also include more images and simple sentence frames to support language production. Low-stakes assessment is creatively integrated through collaborative tasks to reduce anxiety and fear of failure. The curriculum for this scenario is not designed to teach language concepts but also to create connections, which is the priority. This helps the learners narrate their experiences, build vocabulary and use every medium to say their sentences. 

My work with teachers who teach diverse refugee learners has shown me the central elements of a refugee education that aims to achieve educational equality and social justice. To summarize, I would recommend the following key principles to teachers to ensure refugees receive quality education regardless of their starting points and current conditions:

1. Shift from a deficit to a resilience narrative. Refugees are often described by their limitations, such as low literacy levels, lack of stability, among others. These should not define the learner. Although gaps need to be addressed, learners bring multiple strengths, including multilingualism, resilience, and rich cultural awareness, and these should be harnessed.

2. Treat refugee learner support as a whole system responsibility, not an individual teacher’s burden. We need to continue to advocate for structures that sustain teachers who work in these contexts. This includes access to continuous professional development, realistic policy expectations, fair pay and recognition. In particular, there is a need for flexible, low-tech resources that work in classrooms with limited internet. In addition, open educational resources adapted to low-resource settings are especially needed.

3. Teachers and teacher educators need to listen to refugee learners themselves. Student feedback needs to be incorporated more into the curriculum design process, classroom routines and even whole school decision-making. Incorporating student experiences into learning design is a surefire way to create a safe place where students feel empowered and recognised. 

Teaching refugee learners, especially in this part of the world, has its challenges but can also be very meaningful and fulfilling. As teachers keep telling me, it is one of the most beautiful things to see when your learners laugh again as they transition from a place of anxiety to a space that rebuilds not just their academic skills but also their hope and confidence. In the words of Nelson Mandela (2003), “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world” (Mandela, 2003, as cited in Qureshi, 2014, p. 2). Your classroom may not wipe out the sad experiences that come with being a refugee or displaced learner, but with the right attitude, resources, and training, it can become a place that renews hope and provides healing.

NB! All names in this article are pseudonyms. 

Izuchukwu Light Chime is an educator and tech integration specialist supporting teachers working with refugee and displaced learners in Africa. She combines inclusive learning approaches with accessible educational technologies to support language learning. She is passionate about empowering educators to create safe, inclusive, and future-oriented learning environments.

References

Baker, C., & Wright, W. E. (2017). Foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism (6th ed.). Multilingual Matters.

Carello, J., & Butler, L. D. (2015). Practicing what we teach: Trauma-informed educational practice. Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 35(3), 262–278. https://doi.org/10.1080/08841233.2015.1030059

Frieze, S. (2015). How trauma affects student learning and behaviour. BU Journal of Graduate Studies in Education, 7(2), 27–34.

Qureshi, S. (2014). Lessons from the age of Nelson Mandela: Information and communication technology in the quest for equality, freedom and justice. Information Technology for Development, 20(1), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1080/02681102.2014.886369