A brief Introduction

This is the second part of my intervention with various organizations for Women's History Month using Oppia. I called it the Oppia X Yigakpoa project! You can read the first part here!

In all 4 parts of the Oppia X Yigakpoa project, I will be narrating my unique experience with each organization while spreading love through Oppia for Women’s History Month.

(If you want to dive right into Project 2, please check the table of contents & click on “Partnerships”!)

Oppia as a Free and Open Source / Ed-Tech platform provides a novel and engaging approach to online learning that is specially designed to meet the unique needs of under-resourced learners around the world.

Background:

Student profile	School or program	Grade	Time started	Time ended
Age / Gender	Maiyegun Community Primary School	Pry. 4 & 5	11 am	12 pm

The school was founded in January 1955, it was then called Divisional Councils school Maiyegun. The first headteacher was Mr. Tk. Ogunyemi. On the 19th of April 1919 School rooms were built by Engr. Murphy Adetoro made the population grow. On the 24th of March, 1993, 6 more blocks of classrooms were built by NNPC /Chevron. Presently, they have 6 newly built by UBEC/SUBEB with a population of 1015 pupils, 5 teaching staff, and 10 non-teaching staff. The headteacher of the school is Mr. Ayuba who resumed duty in February 2021.

Maiyegun Community Primary School is a free school, children just have to show up to learn. However, some of them miss school from time to time as they need to help at home or in their parent's business. Many of these children’s par­ents are largely traders, and indigenes, whose main con­cerns are to meet their immediate needs like shel­ter, clothing, and feed­ing. For them, sur­vival is a ne­ces­sity, giv­ing their child quality education may not be a priority due to lack of fi­nan­cial means.

Partnerships

As you already know, Oppia.org is constantly looking to partner with organizations and schools as part of its efforts to reach more children. After the first meeting with the headteacher and a visit to the local government on the 9th of march, I was well on the way to starting this beautiful partnership. This blog is about my experience sharing Oppia with the Children at Maiyegun Community Primary School.

Let’s dive in!

Stories of each project will be picture stories because I believe a picture speaks a thousand words.

Day 1 - 22/03/2023

Picture 1 & 2: Children carrying benches to create a special Oppia classroom.

When I arrived on the first day, the headteacher asked some children to arrange a special class since they were from two different classes. This took almost an hour but I was not perturbed since it was a one-time thing.

On this day, the children sang a special song for me welcoming me to their class.

Moments after the lovely song.

I did a headcount and asked them to write down their names but discovered they didn’t come to this class with a biro & paper. To solve this challenge, I appointed Chisom as our Oppia prefect and gave her a biro and a sheet of paper to pass around to the other children.

Taiye wrote her name and Chisom stood by her with the class list. Also, she (Taiye) attempted a question and got half of it so I rewarded her with a gift for speaking up & trying.

We didn't have enough desks, so the headteacher asked some people to go and bring in desks so that the people standing can sit.

Pictures 1 & 2 show a section of the class at the beginning. A bench was brought for the children standing at the back.

I specifically asked for children who weren't doing well in mathematics and I was pre-approved for 50 students, so I came with 50 packs of gifts. I hoped to encourage them with the gifts I came with (30 packs with a math set and 20 packs without a math set). Although I brought gifts for 50 of them, I explained to them that the ones with a math set will be for those that answer my question. I also made them understand that because of time, we might not be able to finish two sessions and therefore some people might not answer questions today, however, I would be back on Friday the 24th and they were okay with it.

After that, I introduced myself to them, told them about Oppia and asked them a bit about themselves. I also told them about the pre-test and they seemed reluctant. I explained to them what the concept of a pre-test was in a mix of vernacular & English language. They felt better about taking it after understanding what it meant. After our pre-test, we decided to learn percentages.

Now there was a slight challenge that seemed to be a roadblock. Although I had two laptops and my phone with me, most of these children could not operate a laptop, there was also no computer lab, nor was there electricity in the classroom for me to use a projector. So I resorted to reading from my phone and leaving one laptop open in front of the whole class to enable them to see the images. This method was new to me so I initially doubted its efficacy considering the number of students in the class.

But they surprised me by being extremely quiet and calm. In fact, a few minutes into the class, Favour Austin had answered the first question of the day on percentages.

Favour Austin with her gift after answering a question on percentages.

Lapari is a star! He initially found it difficult to express himself even though he understood the concept. So before explaining it to him and the whole class again, I made everybody speak positively into their lives! Words like “I’m bold & courageous! I’m a star! I’m very very intelligent! I’m going to understand maths! I can achieve anything I set my heart to do! Failure is only another opportunity to do it better and succeed!”.

I needed these children to believe in themselves and know that their present circumstances in no way defined their future!

Guess what? He got the question (and many others) after that & the whole class cheered him on! 🎉 💃.

Side story, I mistakenly used a permanent marker on the whiteboard and Lapari volunteered to clean it up after school, while our Oppia class prefect (Chisom) somehow managed to get us a new whiteboard marker 👏 . On day 2, when there was no marker in sight, he brought out his lunch money in an attempt to buy a marker for the whole class to use. Of course, I didn’t let him, but I was surprised at this gesture because it not only showed his willingness to learn and sacrifice just to get an education, but it also showed leadership traits. So yes, Lapari is definitely a star.

Ese got a question correctly and received a pack with a math set. The laptop is in the background showing Oppia lessons. Quick backstory. Eseoghene was not a part of the class initially but was listening attentively by the window. I noticed her and asked her if she would like to come in and she said yes. She barely sat down and she had answered the next question. I was super excited, to say the least.

Taiye, Anita, Caleb & Favour during an illustration to help the class answer the second card with the question “Write 2/4 in its simplest form.”

The steady increase in the number of students with the math sets showed that they were learning and assimilating all that Oppia was teaching them.

Picture 1: Samuel after answering a question, Picture 2: Bose after answering a question, Picture 3: Theophilus after answering a question

Picture 1: Isilamiyat after answering a question, Picture 2: Jelili after answering a question, Picture 3: Abdul Ramon after answering a question

Picture 1: Chioma after answering a question, Picture 2: Qudus after answering a question, Picture 3: Nana after answering a question

Picture 1: Favour & Ayo after answering questions correctly, Picture 2: Our Oppia prefect - Chisom*, Picture 3:* Micheal after answering a question.

Picture 1: 20 packs with Mathset & 10 without. Picture 2: I carried all the gifts for two schools at once, since I was supposed to have two pilots on this day.  Picture 3: 30 Mathset packs & 20 without Mathset.

From not knowing how to write the percentage sign at the beginning of the class, exactly 22 children answered questions ranging from “Yesterday, I received 100 necklaces. 65% of those necklaces were gold necklaces. What is the count of necklaces that were gold?" to “What is 100% of 100?” and "What is 50% of 20?" to name a few. I found myself beaming with smiles and getting free hugs from them with questions like when are you coming back? I told them “expect me on Friday and don’t forget come with your books and biro”.

Challenges / Learnings:

• There was no computer lab, no light and I had only my systems and my phone. So, I resorted to reading out the lesson to them on both days.

• Other students loitered around the “special class” and this made it a bit noisy for the students.

• There was a communication gap in the beginning as some of the students found it difficult to assimilate what was being taught. I resorted to Nigerian-Pidgin and one on one explanations. While I was happy to do this, it did take a bit of some time.

• I had to make little changes to the text, for example, instead of pizza & slices of pizza, I told the whole class we would go with bread & slices of bread since everyone could relate to that.

• The windows of the class were open and other students kept coming to make noise and distract them from time to time. However, if I closed the window, the class might get hot. So I had to choose between the devil and the deep blue sea. I chose the latter. I closed the window facing the school premises and left the one facing the backyard open (if that makes sense) & no the class was not hotter or maybe we did not notice.

Conclusion:

It was really touching that in 2023, there are students in Primary 4 & 5 who did not know the sign for percentage till the 22nd of March!

I was reminded to be grateful for all that I have while striving to attain the heights I aim for! These children did not choose their lives, their lives chose them! But yet, here they are happy, excited, living in the moment, and happy to learn maths.

I was also humbled by the opportunity to serve these little ones! The next governor of Lagos, the next President of Nigeria, and the next big scientist might just be seated here if given the right opportunities to shine like the stars they are.

I was not in a hurry to leave on this day & I even missed a second appointment but who cares? The important thing to me was that they understood all I said, one concept at a time, even if they were in bite sizes.

When I realized I had to switch to Pidgin Engish and back, I became super proud of the work the Nigerian-Pidgin team has been doing over the last year because I saw a classic use case & the need cannot be overemphasized. It made me realize that Abba is always looking out for the downtrodden in our society but He can only do it when you and I make ourselves available to serve with our gifts.

Day 2 - 24/03/2023

(Only 38 out of the 50 Students came to school)

We chose to go with addition on this day for two reasons. I wanted to be very sure the math foundation was great and secondly, I didn't want the other students to miss out on anything.

It was interesting to see the answers come at the speed of light. We finished chapter 1 in no time and we went to chapter 2.

There were a few trick questions in chapter 1 like “8+8 =88” & “1+1 = 11” that confused them for a few seconds but that was all! For chapter 2, questions like “4 + ? = 7” & "How many extra bags of flour do we need, if we currently have 5 and need 11 in total?" took them a little time and they eventually got them right.

Another tricky one was Oppia asking them to write out the expressions. They needed to understand what Oppia meant as they were giving what they thought was the answer by reflex. Let’s see an example screen below:

At this point,  we successfully finished two chapters in Addition & Subtraction.

Challenges / Learnings:

The challenges for day 1 held true on day 2. The only difference was that we had learned to close the windows, and I had also learned when to switch from English to Pidgin and vice versa.

Conclusion:

I had mixed feelings on Day 2 as 12 students from the previous class were absent from school. When I asked why, I was told that because it was Friday, some parents tell them to stay back and help them at home, go fishing or go to the market. This was one of the reasons why we took Addition & Subtraction, I didn't want the other students to miss out on anything.

If you read all of this and you’re touched to help the children at Maiyegun, please feel free to reach out! They need a computer lab, electricity in the lab, internet, and a projector will be a nice to have addition. If you visit, you’ll see a lot of them without shoes, some with slippers, and others with torn uniforms. The items listed above will help them continue to take Oppia lessons.

If you’re a government official reading this, I’m impressed knowing that it’s a free school, but I believe we can do so much more. I want to see a Nigeria where you and I will be proud to take our children to public schools again with fully functional computer labs & state of the art science laboratories to name a few!

Lastly, If you’re a maths teacher or a parent and your child is struggling with maths, download the Oppia app now. Visit Oppia.org to learn directly from your browser & thank me later.

At Oppia, there are various opportunities to contribute ranging from UI/UX Design, UX Research, Go-To-market Strategies (Product Management), Devs Team (Coding), Art, Project Documentation, Lesson Creation & Translations (Hoping that you chose to join the Nigerian-Pidgin team)! Feel free to join us in making a difference across the globe by volunteering your time here or donating here.

There are endless opportunities at Oppia and anyone can fit in. So whatever you choose, be rest assured that you are making a positive impact in the lives of children across the globe.

Don’t forget that it’s a 4-part series and the third part with another beautiful school is definitely worth your time (I promise to make it short 😘 🥰)! Read about it here.