The annual $1million Global Teacher Prize organised by the Varkey Foundation, United Kingdom will be awarded today (Thursday) to an exceptional teacher who has made an outstanding contribution to the teaching profession.
This year’s top 10 finalists were selected from over 12,000 applications and nominations from over 140 countries around the world.
The 2020 edition of the Global Teacher Prize will be announced today for the first time in a virtual ceremony accessible to everyone around the world, and will be hosted by a United Kingdom actor, comedian and writer Stephen Fry.
The ceremony will take place at London’s iconic Natural History Museum at 11am GMT today in which one of the phenomenal top 10 educators will be awarded the sixth annual Prize, and win US $1million.
The ceremony will also include special recognition for one teacher – a Covid-19 hero – who has gone above and beyond to keep young people learning during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Nigerian nominee
Among the top 10 finalists, is a Nigerian, Olasunkanmi Opeifa of Government Day Secondary School, Karu, Abuja, teaching English to children who have poor writing skills, some degree of reading disabilities and relative poverty.
Olasunkanmi teaches his students by using edutainment, fun-based learning, online videos and the Flip Classroom Model in his teaching.
He has also published a book on learning English in order to reach more students beyond his community, and introduced free weekend tutorials in order to cover the syllabus with them.
With this approach, examination results have improved vastly, and many students have met the benchmark for admission to university.
In 2018, Olasunkanmi was awarded Maltina Teacher of the Year (Best Teacher in Nigeria) and in 2019, his school was among the top ten schools nationwide in the Global Diamond Challenge.
As a result of winning the Teacher of the Year award, the school was able to build a block of six classrooms with a well-stocked library, combating overpopulation in classrooms and vastly enlarging the school’s student capacity.
If Olasunkanmi wins the 2020 Global Teacher Prize, he would use the funds for a number of projects: a scholarship scheme for the underprivileged, the building of libraries in some of the surrounding rural communities, and the creation of a fully digitised K-12 not-for-profit school in his own community.
Nneka Ukachukwu
