The World’s Best Teacher is Changing the Lives in Africa

Most people can look back on their school days and remember one teacher who really inspired them. If you are lucky enough to have been taught by Peter Tabichi, he may have transformed your whole life.

Peter is this year’s winner of the $1 million Global Teacher Prize, awarded by the Varkey Foundation, a UK-based charity dedicated to improving teaching and the status of teachers worldwide.

Teaching and physics and math at Keriko Mixed Day Secondary School in Pwani Village, in remote Nakuru, Kenya, Peter, a member of the Franciscan religious order, has overcome poverty, food shortages and violence to give his students opportunities that even scholars in the rich world could only dream about.

The school’s Mathematical Science team has gained success in getting qualified for this year’s Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. In May, two students will be travelling to Arizona, in the US, to take part.

Beating some of the country’s top schools with a device they invented to help deaf and blind people with measurement, last year, they came top at the Kenya Science and Engineering Fair.

Poverty, famine and conflict

Peter’s achievement is even more formidable considering his school only has one computer and a pupil-teacher ratio of 58-1. A third of his students are orphans or from single-parent families, 95% live in poverty, and some have to walk more than 7km to get to school over roads that can become impassable in the rainy season. He has played a phenomenal role in improving the lives of his students. He donates 80% of his teaching salary to local community projects. Peter goes well beyond the classroom. He has been teaching local people how to grow famine-resistant crops, in a region prone to regular famines.

He set up talent-nurturing and peace clubs to help heal divisions after the violence that followed a disputed election result in 2007. He has been instrumental in revamping school assemblies in order to fill the loopholes between students from different religious groups.

Africa’s school age population is growing fast. More than 480 million of the 1.2 billion people living in Africa are aged under 15; two-fifths of the continent’s population. That figure is predicted to rise to 585 million by 2025.

At the same time, research for the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report last year found employers in sub-Saharan Africa want to recruit people with technology and communication skills.

By: Preeti Narula

Content: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/03/best-teacher-2019-peter-tabichi-africa/