Two alumni of Teach For Nigeria, Gideon Ogungeyimi and Precious Adegunle for developing and implementing innovative ideas to ensure continued learning for their students amidst the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, have emerged winners of the winners in the Educational Aid Global Initiative (Edu-Aid) Most Outstanding Lockdown Teacher Competition.
The Most Outstanding Lockdown competition was organized by Edu-Aid under the banner of the Covenant Christian Center to reward teachers for their selflessness, creativity, and innovation in ensuring continued learning for students during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. The teachers were required to submit a one-minute video detailing the work they did; these submissions were independently assessed to determine the winners.
Gideon Ogungeyimi, a 2018 Teach for Nigeria alumnus, who emerged as winner amidst the coronavirus outbreak and school closure, developed the “Learn at Home” model to engage his students during the lockdown. Under the Learn at Home model, Gideon created and printed worksheets in English and Mathematics which were delivered to the doorstep of his pupils and collected at a later date for assessments.
He also launched ‘Project Feed100’ with two other Fellows- a project that provides low-income families with financial palliatives to cater for their children’s education, feeding and health needs.
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Precious Adegunle, a 2019 Fellow who emerged as the first runner up raised funds to purchase tablets for her students and began a project to digitize the Nigerian curriculum in indigenous languages, particularly Yoruba. She preinstalled these educational contents and also included games, movies, books and worksheets to encourage continued learning for her pupils. Precious went further to distribute these tablets to her pupils for free.
As winners of the competition, Gideon and Precious were presented with a cash prize of N500, 000 and N300, 000 respectively which they have both committed to creating more opportunities for low-income learners and rehabilitating library facilities across low-income schools and communities.
Commenting on this, Folawe Omikunle, CEO, Teach For Nigeria said: “We are tremendously proud to see not only the winner of this contest emerge from Teach For Nigeria, but also the 1st runner up. This is evident in the leadership quality that exists in our teacher leaders. The pandemic widened the gap of inequity, and as leaders who understand the challenges in underserved schools, our teacher leaders did not only identify the challenges but they also displayed a great sense of responsibility and agency in responding urgently to ensure that learning didn’t stop despite the school closure. We are inspired to see the possibilities of the future of education beyond the classrooms within low-income communities.”
The Teach For Nigeria Fellowship is a two year full-time paid commitment, designed to build a movement of leaders across the nation who will work towards eliminating educational inequity in Nigeria by teaching in underserved schools in low-income communities.
