Sometimes the best learning resources are the objects we have walked past every day.
When Samuel introduced the word magnet to his pupils, something wasn’t quite connecting. The children could repeat the word, but it remained just that, a word. They had never held one in their hands. They had never watched it attract metal or wondered why it worked. Instead of ending the lesson there, Samuel asked a simple question.
“What do you call it at home?”
He then challenged his pupils to look around their communities and see whether anyone could find one. The next day, several children returned carrying magnets they had found with the help of family members and neighbours. One pupil even handed Samuel a magnet to keep, a small gift that would later become part of another science lesson.
Nothing extraordinary had happened. No laboratory equipment had arrived. No expensive science kit had been delivered. What changed was that children began seeing science in places they had never thought to look before.
That story is the foundation for the second session of the Digital SPARKS Teachers’ Fellowship. It helped to finally discover that before teachers can introduce new tools into learning, they often need to rediscover the treasures and simple objects that have quietly surrounded them all along.
Learning begins by looking again
Across many schools in Africa, teachers continue to work through very real challenges.
Some classrooms lack books. Others have no internet connection. Many teachers share limited teaching materials with large numbers of learners. These realities deserve thoughtful investment, stronger policies, and better support, but as we continue to advocate for those changes, another question deserves our attention.
What if some of the resources and objects we need are already around us? Not because communities have everything, but because communities often have far more than we first notice.
A bicycle leaning against a classroom wall. Beans drying in the afternoon sun. An old well. A carpenter shaping wood. A grandmother who knows the community’s history. A trader who calculates change faster than most calculators.
These things are easy to overlook because they have become ordinary.
The second Digital SPARKS session invited teachers to pause long enough to notice them again. Not every object belongs in a lesson and not every familiar item becomes a teaching aid, but every community deserves to be seen through the lens of possibility before it is described by what it lacks.
Every community has hidden classrooms
To open the session, Prikkle Academy’s Makerspace Lead, Jamiu Balogun, shared a story from Afon, Kwara State, Nigeria.
For years, much of our work has started with a simple belief.
Communities are already rich with knowledge. Sometimes, that knowledge lives inside discarded materials waiting to be repaired; it sometimes lives inside skilled hands or inside stories passed from one generation to another.
The challenge is learning how to see them. Again and again, we have watched young people transform waste into learning tools, local materials into innovation projects, and overlooked spaces into places of discovery.
That same invitation was extended to every Digital SPARKS fellow.
Look again. Walk around your home. Look around your school. Notice your neighbourhood.
What have you stopped seeing because it has always been there?
A photograph that travelled across borders
One image (the one in B above) sparked an unexpected conversation.
It was a simple photograph of a hand-dug well. No location was given. Immediately, teachers from both Nigeria and Rwanda began discussing it. Some believed it came from Nigeria, while others thought it belonged to Rwanda.
As the conversation unfolded, something beautiful happened. In fact, the discussion moved beyond merely identifying the country. Consequently, teachers began remembering similar wells from their own childhoods. They spoke about drawing water with ropes and buckets, and they reflected on how water was collected before newer systems became common.
In the end, one ordinary photograph suddenly became a lesson about geography, history, engineering, health, language, and community memory. Nobody had planned for that. Instead, curiosity simply opened the door, and perhaps that is one of the greatest gifts a teacher can offer: not all the answers, but just the right question.
Josiane discovered that her compound was already a classroom
When Josiane, one of the Digital Spark Fellows, accepted the treasure hunt challenge, she did not visit a market or search for expensive learning materials. She stepped into her compound.
There she found beans. Maize. Grains drying in the sun. Things she had seen almost every day. Only this time, she looked at them through the eyes of a teacher. A bean could become a counting tool. Groups of grains could introduce sorting and classification.
Maize could begin conversations about farming, food systems, weather, measurement, preservation, and trade.
The materials had not changed. It was her perspective that changed. Josiane also reminded everyone that teachers carry more than professional knowledge. She is a mathematics teacher. She is also a farmer. Neither identity needs to remain outside the classroom. When different parts of our lives meet, learning becomes richer.
Nelson’s lesson was parked outside
Another photograph (Q) showed a bicycle.
Nelson recognised it immediately. “This bike is mine,” he said. It had been parked near the classroom and playground. When asked what he could teach with it, he connected it to a Primary Four lesson on means of transport. The bicycle could help pupils discuss road transport, movement and the carrying of loads.
Then the lesson widened. The wheels could support a discussion about circles. The pedals and chain could enter a lesson on motion. Pupils could label the parts, write a description or discuss road safety. Older learners could compare the distance covered by different wheel rotations or examine friction.
The bicycle had not changed. Nelson’s attention had. Sometimes, the teaching aid is parked outside the classroom and has been waiting for the right question.
Ibrahim opened the storeroom in his mind
Ibrahim was not at home during the session, but the facilitator asked him to picture the items in storage and check whether he had anything he had not used for several months.
All of a sudden, he remembered an old tin. At first, he placed it in the category of unused things. Then he began considering whether it could help him demonstrate how a simple stove works or how to arrange firewood. This part of the activity carried an important warning: old does not mean safe. Someone must clean the material and remove any sharp edges; for example, fire demonstrations require strict control and school approval. Some objects should remain discarded.
The rule is not that every broken thing becomes a teaching aid. The rule is that newness is not the test. Safety and usefulness are.
A teacher can ask four questions before using any local object, such as:
- Is it safe?
- Is it connected to the lesson I am about to teach?
- Can every learner use or observe it fairly?
- Will it help the teacher see whether the idea has been understood by the learners?
Consequently, if the answer is no, the object can stay outside.
The community also has invaluable people
The session moved beyond physical materials. Could a farmer, tailor, trader, mechanic, carpenter, health worker or older community member contribute to a lesson? Some fellows worried about what pupils might think. Would inviting someone else make it appear that the teacher did not know enough?
This concern says something about how teaching authority is often understood. People believe Teachers have every answer, yet the community has someone who has spent years practising the exact thing being taught.
Nelson offered another route; he said, ‘the teacher can approach the person with deeper practical knowledge, learn from them and return to class better prepared’. David added that, where school rules and safety allow, pupils may visit the place where the work happens.
The community member does not replace the teacher. The teacher prepares the learning, frames the questions, protects the pupils and connects the experience to the curriculum. The local expert brings lived practice into view.
Imagine a mathematics lesson on measurement with a tailor. A lesson on money and change with a trader, or a lesson on plants with a farmer, or a lesson on force and repair with a bicycle mechanic. Knowing where knowledge lives is also part of teaching.
Low cost does not mean careless
In the breakout rooms, fellows began connecting familiar materials to curriculum topics.
One group explored personal hygiene. A toothbrush, soap, cup and water could support a practical lesson on daily care. Another group considered stones and sticks for addition and subtraction. Paper could become part of a construction activity. A broom or mop could enter a lesson depending on the subject and goal.
The objects were easy to find. The design work was harder. A teacher still needs to decide what learners will do, what question they will answer, which error the activity may reveal and how the lesson will close. A low-cost object should not become an excuse for low thought.
The strongest practical lesson may use one ordinary item very well. The weakest may contain ten colourful objects with no clear purpose. The material can be free. The thinking should be careful.
Let the learners search too
The next task for the week will move the treasure hunt to the pupils.
Teachers had searched their surroundings, and now, the learners would be invited to find materials themselves and explain why they belonged in a lesson. That changes the work. The child is no longer waiting for the teacher to arrive with everything. A pupil who brings a magnet, leaf, seed, bottle, stone or measuring container must observe, choose and explain.
The object may be useful. The act of noticing may be even more useful.
A learner begins asking: What is this called? How does it work? Where else have I seen it? What can we do with it? Which school topic does it remind me of?
Curiosity enters before the object reaches the desk. This also gives the teacher another way to learn about the child’s world. What children select can reveal the objects, work, languages and experiences that surround them at home.
What the session actually produced
Samuel had a magnet and a clear account of how pupils found it. Josiane had photographs of grains, beans and maize. Nelson had a bicycle and a lesson idea. Ibrahim had begun to see an old tin differently.
The closing chat contained commitments. Oluwatoyin O. planned to keep searching for useful objects that did not cost money. David wanted to use more of what was already around him. Mary planned to look again. Josiane wrote about turning trash into treasure.
These are early actions and intentions. The fellowship cannot yet say that the materials improved learning.
That proof requires another layer. Which topic was taught? What difficulty did the teacher choose? How did learners use the object? What did they say, build, write or correct? What would the teacher change next time?
A photograph of colourful objects may attract attention. The stronger story is the learner’s thinking and the changes that come through that.
A thought for anyone investing in education
Schools need proper materials, books, electricity, safe buildings, internet access and teachers who are supported to learn. The lesson from Session Two is not that communities should manage without these things.
The lesson is that a useful teacher learning model should not collapse when a purchased kit is absent. Teachers can learn a process that travels. Begin with the learning problem. Search the local environment. Select one safe and relevant resource. Design what learners will do. Observe their thinking. Keep the artifact. Reflect on the attempt.
Resources and resourcefulness belong in the same classroom. Samuel’s pupils carried a magnet back to school. The word had left the notebook and returned as something the children could hold. Sometimes, the community does not need to be invited into the lesson. It is already standing outside with the answer in its hand.
Questions people ask
What are locally available teaching materials?
They are safe objects, places, stories and forms of community knowledge that a teacher can connect to a clear curriculum goal.
Do local materials remove the need for school funding?
No. Local materials can widen classroom choices, but schools still need proper books, equipment, infrastructure, technology and teacher support.
How should a teacher choose a local teaching material?
Begin with what learners need to understand. Choose an object that helps them observe, compare, practise, build or explain that idea, then check safety before use.
Prikkle Academy…inspiring community builders.
