A TUTOR AND A HALF

To say the truth, I don't feel flattered when I hear people tell me that the reward for my outstanding work, grit, and sacrifice is in heaven, in fact, I feel very sad, you know why? The doctor, Engineers, and people from all other professions offer their value for a reward which is most a times monetary but here I am doing all I can with all I am and I have and all I get is a reward that I would have to leave this world before I access, how fair is that? Personally, I don't teach my learners with the intention that I want them to grow up, remember me, and come to appreciate my effort when they are all grown, that can happen, but I never think about it like that, it's not something they are to pay for or repay. My job is to ensure at the moment, I give them all I can to make them better people tomorrow. That is why it hurts when the government doesn't pay teachers on time or owes them for many months. That is why it hurts when teachers don't get any serious form of ...

  One thing that surprised me as soon as I got into the public space was the fact that pupils were allowed to fail and still move to the next class. When I was a pupil in primary school I used to dread repeating a class, it was an abomination both at home and in school, In fact, sometimes we just hope we just do well enough not to repeat a class, Kai! That time we'll imagine how sad we'll be sitting in the same class with your juniors while your mates go to a new class and now start to parade themselves as your seniors. Because of this we would do our best in the exams and study hard so that we don't repeat it. Today, I see students just going through the motions of school life without any stake they have their cakes and eat it, they play all day and all night but still get promoted to the next class for absolutely doing nothing. Participants of the Ijebu-Ode Golden Stars Cell Connect Debate  I have heard stories of the days when students in public schools were allowed to r...

  So before I am tagged a prophet of doom, I would like to declare a known fact, when it comes to the Nigerian public school space we are all still very unaware of how much of a problem it is for the majority of our learners to not be able to read. When I say 'not able to read', I don't mean that they don't like the idea of picking up their books or a novel to read, or that they don't care about meeting up their one book a week challenge, here what I am trying to say is that our students are not able to piece two sounds together to form a word, it means that some of them cannot recognize certain alphabets or label them correctly, it means that when they see a passage, all they can see is letters of different sizes grouped together to fill the entire page, they have no idea what those group of letters say or mean. Now the fact that we don't really see this as an actual problem is a problem because how can you try to solve a problem if you don't even know it...

  You know sometimes things happen to you and you just want those things to be in your past and never come up and for some weird reason you actually start to forget that those things happened to you. It took me a grant essay to dig deeper into my 'why' to find the actual reason why I won't let it slide if it has to do with the fact that a child cannot afford certain basics of life. In 2006/2005 thereabouts I had just gotten into Junior Secondary School 1 and I even remember coming first in my class that first term, in that same year, I started noticing a lot of issues going on in my home, and though I cannot start to mention the personal problems we had to face at that time, all I knew was that it was financially draining for my parents who then could not take it anymore, so one day our parents told us that we could not continue going to school. I remember my siblings and I didn't even complain it was almost as if we saw it coming considering that we were almost always ...

In the public school system, you find for example in my class that about twenty of the twenty-four learners in my class could not read. The reality is the fact that we have around nine subjects in a day to cover and you have bi-weekly tests to do, assignments that you must give, find a way to mark, and of course curriculum which you have to exhaust. One is now caught between which should be the priority for the teacher, I under that the best logical thing to do is try and focus energy on the fact that eleven-year-olds cannot identify two-letter words and automatically cannot read but here you remember that teaching reading takes a lot of time then you find out that some of them cannot properly write the alphabets, then you see some who have issues putting the alphabets together to make a sound, there are others who have issues numerically or need help all round and then the teacher is out-rightly exhausted! So if you decide that today instead of following the usual timetable of subject...

  We used to think that as a teacher, all we needed to do was make sure we plan our lessons, do our research properly, manage our class, and use appropriate teaching methodology to achieve quality academic outcomes. As educators we tried our best to make sure our learners came out with the best understanding of theories and their application, we found joy in the fact that our learners represent the school in debates and quizzes and medals follow them home as champions. A while later, educators started to concentrate also on the social-emotional learning of their learners, they started to care about the other aspects of life that were not predominantly academic, we started to care about how the learners relate with each other and with themselves, we started to allow student leadership take form and create avenues where the voices of students were heard. Now it's really hard to say what the emphasis is because a 21st-century teacher is supposed to wear different shoes and switch role...

If you are a primary school teacher and you teach more than one subject raise your hand.  Do you have subjects you know you have to do more research on before you feel confident teaching them? Do you sometimes feel the need to recheck and double-check things in one or more subjects compared to others? Are there subjects you have outright joy and confidence teaching compared to others? Are there times you wish you just stick to some of these subjects instead of having to pack up everything? To be honest, I understand that most school facilities cannot afford to pay individual teachers to handle each subject, I understand that they expect primary school teachers to know and understand the basic subjects well enough to teach them at preliminary levels, BUT! Are we experimenting with the next generation of Nigerians or are we giving them the best that there is? Our pupils deserve to have the best from every teacher and a teacher can only be his best self if he is teaching what he feels...

  Khalid lives with his mom,  a stepfather, and three other siblings. His mom used to sell 'Erugege' (a local alcoholic substance) before even that business crashed because they had spent all her profit on meals for her family since her husband isn't doing anything at the moment because his bike was ceased and he was fined. Khalid's mom has to find a way to take care of the entire family since all Khalid's stepfather does right now is sleep all day long in their one-room apartment. Since Khalid's mom cannot seem to find anything else to do, Khalid and his siblings are always hungry and cannot afford to buy school materials or even change their torn and worn-out out uniforms. They are at the mercy of their neighbors who call out to them whenever their own children are eating. Khalid's real dad is not dead, he just isn't having anything to do with Khalid, Khalid's mom was married to him before she had to leave the marriage due to fidelity issues and la...

  Every day I come to the realization that it doesn't take so much for things to change it only takes a change of perspective. Take my assistant head teacher for example who told me that even if they had the money to fix the classrooms she would rather use the money for a need in her own home. Let's now imagine that the kids in that class with a big hole in the middle are her children, do you think she'll talk like that? The answer is No! The teachers who over-flog kids to the point where they have serious injuries or even faint would never do that to their own children. Teachers of Emmanuel Anglican Primary School 1 Italupe Ijebu-ode in a safety programme Teachers would take her work more seriously if she had the responsibility of teaching her own kids. The government would respond to the complaints and pleas of the education sector if their kids were in these schools. We have removed ourselves from our work so much so that we are now forgetting that these children are hum...

One advantage of being a cell president for a Teach for Nigeria fellows connect cell is the opportunity to steer conversations in different directions and really lean into problems faced by fellows in their classrooms on a daily basis with the intention of helping them find a solution. One problem that has always made the rounds in our monthly meetings has been the usage of curse words by public school teachers. As Teach for Nigeria fellows, we were trained on the importance of social-emotional learning and the advantages of positive affirmations so when we get into a class with our pupils we go all the way to create chants that will pass the message we want to pass, we tell the kids that they are more than capable to achieve their goals if they work hard at them. The flip side is when you have a government teacher in your class and as soon as you are done affirming and encouraging the children he or she notices something he/she is not happy about and next thing, he/she throws in a bad...

  IF FLOGGING DOESN'T CURE STEALING IN CHILDREN: THEN WHAT WILL? Unfortunately, this is not an expose on how to deal with kids that steal maybe because I actually haven't found any solutions or way out of this in one even after asking a few veteran teachers, I end up getting that deep concerned look that says 'hmm, we really don't know I have recently been in a space where two little children were being punished for stealing, I must confess in one of the cases though this boy was only twelve years old, I couldn't tell if he was lying or saying the truth. The teachers around just swung into a full flogging mode in order to get the truth out of the child. I have issues with that maybe because I had a similar issue when I was a child, around junior secondary school I was accused of stealing by a friend of mine, she stole her neighbor's phone and when she was confronted about it accused me of stealing the phone and giving it to her. I knew I didn't steal any pho...

  As a teacher, the fact that I had 24 pupils out of which only 4 could read gave me sleepless nights. I spent hours researching the best ways to get 9-12-year-olds to correctly read up a complete sentence. I have tried phonics, “D” Star alphabets, teaching sight words, and even using queen premiere but I wasn’t seeing a real effect on their reading. Later on, I realized that I was the one doing all the pushing which made the motivation to read an external affair and consequently, a little beyond reach. I even tried to tell them how important it was to read and the many doors it could open for them in the future, but somehow, it didn’t just register in their consciousness. This continued to be the case until I added something else to the mix-Reward! Kids love rewards, I promise you, those things you reward kids for are not only going to continue but are most likely to become a priority for them. One Monday morning, I came to class and paired up my pupils into different groups, I pa...

First of all, it is only in public schools that we have assembly time for 8am, why?  Most schools begin assembly by 7:30am and by 8am, full classes kick start but here especially in Ogun State, by 8am students are still singing Iseya  (the Ogun state anthem). I have been in a school where even the assembly days are not on a daily basis so as to cut down on unnecessary routines that most of the time we just do because it has been done for many decades before our time. Miss Agnes and Mr. Funsho hosting their Coach (Bright) in their placement school  Don't get me wrong, I value the importance of a daily assembly for a primary school, in this part of the world, the assembly is where we teach the children the national anthem, school anthem, state anthem,  school values, and so on, I really wonder if children will know the national anthem if they don't sing it on a daily basis, I remember learning the anthem on the assembly ground as I sang it daily on the assembly ground....

  As educators, there are certain unwritten rules that we all think we need to follow, and standards we expect ourselves to live by but by all means, there are days when all I want to do is be nice to myself, give myself some grace and tap myself on the back because though I intend to give things my all, I need to acknowledge that I am already doing a great job at the moment. As Educators, we are supposed to plan our notes and lessons at least a week before, plan our instructional materials and notes. We are to envision ourselves taking those classes even before they ever do and prepare beforehand for any contingency that may come up along the way. Dear educator, are there times when despite your preparation and foresight, you hit a wall at a point where someone asks a question, or at a point where you have an internal dilemma about ether to pick up one spelling over another. Those moments when you’re sure but not too sure, you know it but you’re not so sure. In this case, what do ...

  It’s a beautiful thing that the world is now linked in such a way that we have the possibility to interact with people from both far and near. We are now in our own interconnected world which has been called a globalized village-in this world anything is possible! No wonder Mama Nne , my grandma, born in the nineteen thirties, still shakes her head in disbelief almost like there’s some sort of witchcraft underneath all these that she would rather not have anything to do with. Now the chances of people born in different tribes, races, and tongues finding themselves, interacting, and even getting married have increased so much so that my mom would let her first daughter, her Ada (what a first-born daughter is called in Igbo ) date someone who is not from the eastern part of the country and even supports the intentions of marriage with a supposed outsider even after the daily warnings I received from childhood, I was brought up to think of a companion as a man with mainly two qualit...

“The words you speak become the house you live in.” Interesting quote, right?  One day I was having an informal conversation with Marvelous, a student in my class and she told me that “her brain was spoilt” which was a way of saying that she had a learning disability that makes it impossible for her to learn. I was so surprised that a ten- year-old would have such an opinion about herself. After much probing, she told me that a few months ago she was involved in an accident that almost had her right leg amputated, she was hospitalized for months and couldn’t attend school. When she finally returned to school, she found it very difficult to catch up. It was at this point that her mom made her believe that the accident had affected her learning ability and it was therefore impossible for her to learn anymore. Whenever Marvelous faced a little setback, she would just give up telling herself learning wasn’t for her. Because of this she could not read a complete sentence and d...

  I have always believed that one day there would be some sort of eruption in the form of a revolt that will lead to a shift in perspective and focus in the education sector. I believe that that revolution will enable not just the government but individuals to see the importance of education and the role it can play in the entire transformation of a country.   Being in the public school system I have come to the realization of the possibility of public school teachers taking a back seat in whatever revolt is about to come. Do you know why? It’s the same reason a public school teacher will decide to sit down in a dilapidated building called a classroom for twenty years, without a single word of complaint. The popular idea is that, if they complain about the things that are wrong it would make the government look and feel irresponsible almost like they are spreading its dirty linens in public and as a result, they may lose their jobs. Ah! A job they’ve been doing for twenty-five...

  Have you been in a space where it feels like you’re getting it right with all the other children but this one child won’t let you drink water and drop cup. They are the ones who see a hole in every plane and a motive in every gesture. They go left as soon as you say everyone should  “go right” and sometimes get to influence the others with their actions too.   This is not the moment where I give you a magic wand that will transform that child into the obedient child you want, this is what you resort to when you’ve tried all the yelling and punishment strategies that you have got up your sleeve and it’s still not working.   Tough kids are a combination of strong will and a sort of closeness, now we are not about to take the strong will out of our kids because that attribute is one that would enable him/her question status quo, challenge popular opinion even if it means standing alone and would enable the child run with the dreams once their minds are made up about t...

  While growing up, I recall listening to my teachers lament about how youngsters my age detested reading. Some of our teachers even went further to recount stories of how much they read as kids and how it had shaped them into the adults they have become. Now as a grown-up, I cannot help but shake my head as I watch this same trend go extinct right in my face. I find out that kids these days would do anything else but read. Truthfully in our present day, a lot has changed. An average child has to deal with distractions from the internet and television. Even as a grownup, I find myself sometimes lost in this world of information, adverts, and social media, how much more the Gen Zers? Urgent solutions are needed as blame games would not avail much. One laudable solution I have discovered is imitation. Children are great imitators so we must consciously give them great things to imitate. They often like to repeat what they have seen the special people in their lives do. A fr...

  When I resumed at my placement school I realized that there were so many things that were standing in the way of proper time management in the public school system. I noticed that as soon as the assembly was over around 8am, all the teachers now start gathering outside the Assistant head teacher's office. It's a routine and we all know it. It usually begins with a worship song and then prayer starts before the announcement and chitchat about something completely off begins before they now finally go to their classrooms. Sometimes all these ends after 9am. First of all, why are we gathering to sing and pray again when we just did that with the children? Is this one we are having a superior prayer? Why are we gathering every day to repeat things we already know. More so we are all on the Whats App group where only staff of the school get to pass information and talk as much as they want. As we are out there talking about things we could easily pass across through the Whats App ...

  I dream of a time when schools especially the public schools are given the attention they deserve, I dream of a school without broken chairs and leaking roofs, a school where nobody has to sit on the floor or sit with so many other children on an uncomfortable chair. Nobody gets to report a bad chair spoiling their uniforms and injuring them. I dream of a school where the health care facility is solid and ready to attend to children and health facilities within the schools that are befitting for the next generation of Nigerians. No one has to be sent home when they are feeling ill because the school does not have the proper health facility to handle simple ailments but yet there are almost two thousand children who come to these schools every day.  I dream of a school where the children are not placed on the cold floor with an iron spoon in their mouths when they are convulsing. Agnes Onyekwere with her pupils on the field I dream of a school where the children are seen in t...

I was very fascinated when I got to find out about the homegrown feeding programme in Ogun State which was organized in collaboration with the MacArthur Foundation. The mainstream media went bizarre with the information as several newspapers reported the impacts of the feeding programme on schools in Ogun state. Many schools which had previously accounted for a high rate of dropouts and absenteeism started reporting issues of congestion and overflow of students due to the daily meals they now receive from the feeding programme. This was a programme I was fascinated about and I couldn’t wait to see the impacts with my own eyes but by 2021 when I arrived in Ogun State, I was told that the programme had packed up. Articles I saw online mentioned that some individuals were receiving funds but not executing their end of the bargain making it impossible for the programme to continue, so according to news reports, the programme was suspended so that these issues would be addressed. Well, unfo...