To improve the quality of education in local communities, Transforming Lives and Communities Initiatives (TLCI) in conjunction with the iAfrica Cloud School recently trained teachers and school owners in Ajegunle Ifelodun community, Lagos.

The initiative sponsored by DoorwayAfrica 360, a leading learning management system, is designed to help bridge the literacy gaps for people in underserved communities across the country.

The team lead for the iAfrica Cloud School Foundation, Mrs. Modupe Adeyinka-Oni, and a team of her staff visited Ajegunle to empower the educators by focusing on the skills required in their practice to help them improve learning outcomes.

In her speech at the event, Managing Director of Nigeria Satellite Company, Mrs. Jane Egerton-Idehen, who is a product of Ajegunle, encouraged the teachers, reminding them that what defines them is their determination, focus and size of their dream.

Egerton-Idehen said as a child, she had big dreams and her father encouraged her by staying up late to read the newspapers so she could study. This little effort, despite his inability to provide more than one meal a day, found the desire in the little Jane to believe that she could be what God called her to be.

She also spoke about her travel around the world and the various roles she had occupied in different places across the globe.

The teachers in their feedback showed they paid attention to the training and their takeaways were as diverse as the people that came out.

One of the teacher said she would play the tape to her class because there was a young smart boy who believed that education would not take him anywhere.

Adeyinka-Oni in her own presentation, touched on the importance of shifting their mindset from a teacher-led classroom to a pupil-led classroom as she modeled the various activities that define a pupil-led classroom.

She talked about engagement, teamwork and explained that all these were soft skills that the World Economic Forum required to find in every child. She also laid emphasis on communication as she introduced DoorwayAfrica 360.

A spark was brought to the event by a brief practical demonstration of an animated and highly interactive teaching style by one of the educators on the Doorway Africa 360 LMS Ms. Oyinkansola Ogungbemi.

The LMS presentation was made by Mrs. Tosin-Sarah Igwe, who narrated her story during the presentation.

Igwe related how she never had a primary school education, but was self-taught. Tosin-Sarah Igwe went ahead to achieve so many laudable awards and roles teaching in international schools. Most noteworthy was that today she is one of Africa’s top 20 curriculum designers, and one of two in Nigeria.

The Doorway Edulab 360 app was seen as a revolutionary tool by all the educators. They were excited to know that they could have a tool that would improve their own English alongside their children. The stories that had been voiced, they felt would captivate their children.

At the end, a team of teachers from Standard Bearers School led by the Head Teacher, Mrs. Antonia Omoze, in a panel discussion, talked about how education and teaching had impacted their lives.

They helped the teachers to see and understand that there is a reward for being a good teacher or become ‘brand teachers’.

The session ended with a team dance competition of teachers and school owners, where people were nominated by the teams to participate. Ms. Grace-Nkwocha, who organised the event, was overwhelmed by all the information that everybody brought.

The school owners and teachers themselves made an open demand that this event should no longer be held annually but per term going forward. They expressed commitment to going away to improve their own practice by the things they had been taught and were even ready to subscribe to the DoorwayAfrica 360 LMS because a lot had been said about lifelong learning which they had now understood was up to them.

The participants promised to invest in themselves and not wait for someone to invest in them.

For the iAfrica Cloud School team, it was nostalgic, impactful on both sides, highly fulfilling and encouraging, seeing that their little effort of stepping out of their comfort zones to come into Ajegunle meant a lot to the people they met and they promised to come back again.

The convener, Ms. Grace-Nkwocha, thanked everybody for coming, and announced that the trainings will continue within a WhatsApp community.