Imagine this: you’re driving into work tomorrow and your headteacher greets you at the gates. She says: “I’m afraid we have had a change of circumstances. Your new class will have 268 students in it. You won’t have any teaching assistants. You won’t have any teaching resources apart from a blackboard.” This would cause a riot in any place I’ve ever worked.

For Temwa Chilengwa, such circumstances have been the norm every day for the past five months. She isn’t your ordinary teacher. I came across her through something she posted on Facebook that really caught my eye - a selfie stood in front of her class saying she was “proud to be a teacher”.

I wanted to find out more about her teaching life, so I messaged her and we got chatting. Temwa is 23 years old and teaches in one of the most deprived areas of the most deprived countries in the world: Malawi. She works in the rural community of Lilongwe West at Chambu Primary School.

Her class has 268 pupils in it. This was a staggering number to me and she admits it’s the largest class size in the school with every class having at least 100 students. Resources are scarce (I also noticed Temwa asking someone on Facebook to send her some chalk if they could). Each child has two pencils and two exercise books (these were actually donated by a friend of hers). She will buy them all pens from her own pocket when they start their exams next month.

In the school as a whole, the situation is even starker - there are 1,700 students and 10 teachers to go around, from first grade through to eighth. How do you teach 268 students? “I teach all of them at once. I use so many methods like lecturing, group work, question and answer, brainstorming and many more,” she tells me.

I know how hard it is to manage 30 children for an hour, let alone 268 for a whole day. Even the most skilled “sages on the stage” that I know would struggle. As for the Q&A and group work, classroom management would take on a whole new meaning.

She tells me she benefits from having a very loud voice: “As I stand in front, I watch everyone. Most of them behave well, especially the girls, but some trouble me very much. When I get out of the class I find chaos when coming back. They run, fight, climb on the windows, climb the door and do so many things. Those who are very destructive sit in front while those who are well-behaved sit at the back.”

‘Help me make my school a good school’

Temwa receives a salary of about £90 per month. “The salary alone isn’t enough. I used to sell eggs for extra money, but the business died because I spent all the money on the children. I’ve had some debts because I can’t just see the kids every day without doing something to help them.”

Many of her friends have gone to work in town schools where, even though conditions are better, class sizes still range from 60 to 100 pupils. “I have been here for only five months because at first people were telling me that I would die from hunger, so I was afraid, but so far I’ve been OK.”

While some UK schools invest thousands in iPads, the students in Malawi struggle to get a single textbook.

“People have been offering me teaching jobs in good schools but I tell them not to take me away, but help me make my school a good school. I can’t move to teach in another area unless my students get enough support,” she says.

As globalisation has connected the world, Temwa’s story becomes easier to find and share. Talking to her made me question what the hell I’m doing. That might not be a bad thing. I’ve always found it useful to question the relative difference I’m making versus my quality of life. My mind wandered to my old school friend, James Tyrell, who quit his job and used his savings to leave the UK for Sierra Leonne, where he set up the successful charity, Laughter Africa, to support street children there. His calling was for something radical, but do we all have the capacity to be more radical in our own thinking as “expert educators”?

My own experience of living and teaching in orphanages in Tanzania gave me a real insight into educational poverty, but even more so, into the immense desire to be educated that is so evident among the poorest communities in the world. As teachers, we have a special skill set and our capacity to make a difference is endless. The privilege is huge and I hope I will always be as appreciative of it as Temwa in my current and future endeavours.

Thomas Rogers is a teacher who runs rogershistory.com and tweets @RogersHistory

For more columns by Tom, view his back catalogue