The two are among seven teachers from five African countries who made the top 50 shortlist for the Varkey Foundation’s Global Teacher Prize 2018.
Now in its fourth year, the US$1 million award, considered as the ‘Nobel Prize’ for teaching, is the largest prize of its kind.
The winner will be announced at the Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai on Sunday 18 March 2018.
The other five teachers shortlisted from Africa are Marjirie Brown and Wendy Horn from South Africa; Catherine Nakabugo from Uganda; Abdikadir Ismail from Kenya and Sitsofe Enyonam Anku from Ghana.
According to Forbes, these leading lights of the teaching profession were selected from over 30,000 nominations and applications from 173 countries around the world.
The Global Teacher Prize was set up by the Varkey Foundation, founded by Indian billionaire Sunny Varkey, to recognize one exceptional teacher who has made an outstanding contribution to the profession, as well as to shine a spotlight on the important role teachers play in society.
Itodo Anthony
Itodo is celebrated on the www.globalteacherprize.org for elevating the profession to a place of pride, and for putting passion above pecuniary benefits.
His bio reads: “At the beginning of his career, in a small rural school in Nigeria, not many people understood why Anthony would get a master’s degree from a UK university and end up teaching in a village for ‘peanuts’.
“But this was part of his mission – to elevate the teaching profession to a place of pride; to show, with his own life, that the profession is a noble one whose value is not tied to how much we earn.
“When he teaches in class he tries to introduce positive values from other parts of the world to broaden their view of life. He preaches the virtues of justice, institutional soundness, community service, value creation, among others that are elements from other cultures that can help create an ideal value system in the Nigerian youth.”
Itodo was said to have, in May 2017, founded a community-based organisation for youths – New Frontiers Youth Forum, which welcomes membership from 13 to 35-year-olds, and with the aim of raising an army of young leaders to act as positive change agents within the community.
“In October 2017, The Forum commissioned a community library (first in the community) where students and others could study in comfort or have access to resources they couldn’t afford.”
Itodo Anthony, who currently teaches at the Gateway Excel College, Otukpo, Benue State, obtained a Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng.), Petroleum Engineering, from the University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State; and Master of Science (MSc) Reservoir Evaluation and Management at the Heriot-Watt University.
Ayodele Odeogbola
According to his bio on the www.globalteacherprize.org, Ayodele Odeogbola teaches STEM Education and Global Studies to 11 to 15-year-olds in Ogun State and is passionate about developing his learners to be future leaders and become stakeholders in their world.
“He uses collaboration, critical thinking, creativity and communication, combined with innovation and new technology to transform learning. In class, he has chosen gifted students as leaders to head groups and review every learning activity – many of these have gone on to become leaders in higher education.
“Rather than teach the same thing in the same way to all, Ayodele seeks to match the different needs, potentials and learning paths of each child. He says, ‘For every human challenge in the new world we live in, there is always a technological solution’.
“As part of this, he has brought technology industry experts into his classroom and linked his class to peers in schools in India and Lebanon using Skype and social media.”
Ayodele is said to have been active in many projects focusing on education and youth development, and has mentored other teachers and national youth service corps leaders.
A major project he was credited with leading was the Beyond School Community Challenge Project – a flagship initiative of Mandela Washington Fellowship Alumni Association of Nigeria.
“The initiative involved over 300 schools in developing young people to be the solution to their communities, in line with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
“Ayodele has also developed a professional development scheme that has so far trained over 2,000 teachers with the support of the United States Mission in Nigeria, Microsoft Nigeria and the Ogun State government.”
Ayodele, who currently teaches at the Abeokuta Grammar School, Abeokuta, obtained a Bachelor of Education (BEd) Accounting Education from the Tai Solarin University of Education, Ijagun, Ogun State; and a Master of Arts in Online/Digital Education and Distance Learning from the National Open University of Nigeria.
Sunny Varkey, the man behind the Global Teacher prize is a non-resident Indian, Dubai-based education entrepreneur and education philanthropist. He is the founder and chairman of the global advisory and educational management firm GEMS Education, which is the largest operator of private kindergarten-to-grade-12 schools in the world, with a network of over 130 schools in over a dozen countries.
He is also the chairman of the umbrella business organization, the Varkey Group, and the founder and trustee of the philanthropic Varkey Foundation.
According to Wikipedia, as of 2012, Varkey is also a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador; and in June 2015, Varkey committed to The Giving Pledge, vowing to donate at least half of his money to philanthropic causes over his lifetime.
He is the first education entrepreneur to join the pledge.
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