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Nigeria – Olasunkanmi Opeifa

“What I love most about my career is the ability to change lives,” says Olasunkanmi Opeifa, an English teacher at Govt. Day Secondary School Karu, Abuja, Nigeria. Finding a teacher who goes beyond the traditional classroom to innovate and engage with the students, is a rare find. Olasunkanmi is a driven professional who is dedicated and a big believer in quality education through digital technology. He is one of the Top 10 Global Teacher Prize finalists to receive a portion of the funds from the winner, Ranjitsinh Disale. Together with the Ranjitsinh Disale Foundation, Olasunkanmi will use education as an instrument of change.

DRIVING FORCE

Growing up, Olasunkanmi was bereft of equal opportunity and quality education. His purpose of being a teacher is drawn from a lack that he faced in his childhood, and he wishes to equip his students and children in the community with the power of learning. He puts his students at the center of his teaching, and has created unique ways to create a two-way teaching strategy. He has also served as the only English teacher in a village school located in a very remote part of Nigeria. Here, he helped build the school’s first library. At his current school, he has learnt new things about himself while teaching his students.

IMPACT

Olasunkanmi follows a unique teaching method by using edutainment and engagement-based learning which creates an environment that children just don’t want to miss out on. Be it teaching English phonetics using rap or essay writing with popular dance moves, Olasunkanmi worked with the idea of making learning fun. He made education and knowledge an unforgettable experience, and kept their interests at heart while also being able to yield the right results for them.

He has reached beyond children beyond the school by publishing a book on learning English, while also providing weekend tutorials. Overall, his students improved their examination results and met admission requirements for University. He has even trained 3,000 teachers and for his unending efforts, he was awarded Maltina Teacher of the Year (Best Teacher in Nigeria in 2018 that got his school countrywide recognition.

CHALLENGE

On arriving at the school in Abuja, a semi-rural area, Olasunkanmi knew he would be confronted with multiple challenges. The students came from low-income families and could barely even afford the subsidized school fees. The lack of resources also trickled down to the school because access to instructional materials was a rare occurrence, and even the curriculum present was outdated. Another major challenge is the class strength is that there are many students and handling individual concerns according to aptitude becomes an obstacle. However, when you are left to your own devices, you can become the change-maker students need. That is who Olasunkanmi is, a teacher who took these challenges in his stride and treated them as fuel to innovate, educate and introduce his children to the concept of digital classrooms.

STEP FORWARD

He will continue his journey of imparting quality education by creating digitally equipped classrooms. With the first rounds of funds received, Olasunkamni invested in the digital infrastructure and purchased an interactive learning board, computers, a projector and many other digital tools. 100 teachers and over 1,000 students will have access to this digital classroom to make learning more relevant for the 21st century students. These are necessary steps in revolutionizing learning in a school that has only seen dilapidated classrooms and barely motivated children. It is his dream to create change in the community by introducing more and more digital classrooms in the future, working in tandem with Ranjitsinh Disale Foundation.