Why I Teach: Bringing African Education Back to Africa
I started this series to celebrate others. It would be wrong to finish it without saying why I teach.
How I began
I started teaching in 2015 at Achievers International School in Obosi. Since then I have taught in many schools and lesson centres across Anambra, Ebonyi and Enugu States, students from age seven to twenty-one, in classrooms in towns and in villages far from town.
Why Nkuzify
I teach because I want to make a real impact on the world. I want to bring African education back to Africa, and the way I know how is to teach, and teach, and keep teaching.
I have taught in many places, and I saw how much of a teacher's time goes into preparing. So I built a place where teachers can come and download lesson plans and lesson notes, and make their work easier. It is a learning management system, an LMS, and it took me months to build. A teacher can host their lessons there without creating a website of their own. For now, all of it is free.
I also want to build apps that help students across Nigeria, like Tekoon, our typing game.
Our vision
One day I want us to have a school where Africans study real African things. Take water processing. It sounds simple, even funny, but I believe it sits at the root of a great deal of suffering, because many people drink water treated in factories with chemicals, and we were never taught to do better. Look at our buildings. Our forefathers built with mud for a reason. Why do we wear suits under the sun? Why do we tell our children not to speak their own languages, and call our own languages vernacular while we speak another man's? Why is English compulsory for everyone who writes JAMB's UTME?
These are the things we need to study in school, along with parenting, because divorce is common and many homes struggle. I believe Africa is suffering because of a lack of education of our own, and there is a lot we need to look into. Some of that work has already begun on this blog, in posts such as Do You Know About the Four Great Ụga of the Igbo People? and Time Is an Illusion. I can only start from Nkuzify. It is the only place I know to begin, and I am doing my best.
What I want teachers to know
Teachers, you do not have to carry the preparation alone. Come to Nkuzify, download lesson plans and lesson notes, and make your teaching easier. Right now it is free. You are doing the work that builds the Africa we want to see, and I thank you for it.
Happy Teachers' Day to every teacher in this series, and to every teacher who is not.
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