Nigerian teacher bringing world into her online class
FOR many 12th graders, the closure of Nigeria’s public schools to combat the spread of Covid-19 presents a particular problem: How to prepare for crucial final exams?
Basirat Olamide Ajayi, a maths teacher in Lagos, Nigeria’s biggest city, came up with a solution. She began offering free maths classes online via Twitter, WhatsApp and Instagram.
After almost six months, more than 1 800 learners are taking her classes – across Nigeria and even internationally. Learners watch her fiveminute maths videos and respond to her questions. She sends them homework and occasional assignments. And she grades them.
“Sometimes, I stay awake till 2am going through their assignments,” she said. “Covid is here with both negative and positive impacts. The positive impact is that we can use technology to teach our students, which I am very, very happy about.”
When Ajayi, 36, started her online classes, she solved maths problems on camera on white sheets of paper. Then a parent donated a whiteboard.
A recent request to join her class came from Canada .Ajayi says she is beginning to see herself as a global teacher. “The online teaching has made me feel that I can actually teach the whole world maths,” she said.
“On Twitter people see me all over the world, not only in Lagos, not only in Nigeria, and that is enough to give me innermost joy.”
But not all learners in Nigeria have easy access to her lessons.
“Some of them don’t even have data to access the class, and that is not giving me joy.”
Ajayi pays for data for some of the learners from her own pocket to allow them to be online. Some learners don’t have phones; she encourages parents to share their phones.
Fortune Declan, 17, said Ajayi has made it easier for him to grasp maths.
“When I started learning differentiation on my own it was kind of twitchy,” he said. “But when I joined the online maths platform, I started slow at first, but with the way my maths teacher was teaching, holding the sessions, I started learning differentiation rapidly.”
Her dedication was noteworthy, said Adedoyin Adesina, the chairperson of the Lagos arm of the Nigerian Union of Teachers.
“Teaching students virtually was a new experience to everybody,” he said. “There is the problem of slow internet, the cost of data and the unco-operative attitude of parents who were not familiar with what teachers are doing.”
Ajayi has shown real dedication, he said, especially as “she was not provided with money, data or any teaching material”.
Ajayi said she was gratified to be helping so many learners: “The more I give, the more society will benefit from me and people can say ‘Mrs Ajayi has done this to the whole world’.”