Creating kids as innovators part 1

We, educators live in an age when our job is to move students go beyond memorizing a things they might need someday. These days a smartphone and quick Google search are able to do that. Our true job is to get students ready for the future by helping them learn to access and use information in ways that are meaningful to them. To motivate their innate desire to learn about their world (and improve it).

It’s important that we provide them the opportunities to pursue their own interests and passions. Offering students this as part of their education tells them that their own desires are critical to the learning process. It also asks them the most important question a teacher can ask: “What do you want to learn?”

When I taught as a math teacher in North Carolina, I was fortunate to see this at work with our school requiring every senior to present a speech that encompassed something they were passionate about. We saw tremendous creativity, talent and skill emerge as students explored cooking, video game programming, yoga, astronautics, andmauto design.

I happened to teach students of various grades and learned to find creative ways to offer a similar experiences to my other students. Now I appreciate this practice more tan ever practice of offering students the hours and resources to develop passion projects on the side. Since then, I encourage teachers of all grade levels and in all subject areas, the value of offering students passion time (named “20time” by Google Educators Academy) at school.

This set aside time could be scheduled for one day a week, one hour a day. I’ve seen this type of program be successful in my wife’s kindergarten class, with senior projects, and in every grade in between. I’ve also seen it work at the various schools that I taught at.

One that I recall with fondness was that of a school in New York City; the Bronx; to be more precise a High School not too far from the Yankee Stadium where our visionary Principal created the Passion project as part of the school culture. All students spend their entire Wednesday working on a project pursuing one of their passions, and all the teachers at the school were involved (at least two teachers were required to sign off on each project before a student begun). The students build windmills, painted murals, produced illustrated books, to name a few. The evidence of their learning was all over the school.

These students have ownership over their own learning, and they had a school with the courageous leadership and empowered teachers needed to make that happen.

Creating kids as innovators part 1

We, educators live in an age when our job is to move students go beyond memorizing a things they might need someday. These days a smartphone and quick Google search are able to do that. Our true job is to get students ready for the future by helping them learn to access and use information in ways that are meaningful to them. To motivate their innate desire to learn about their world (and improve it).

It’s important that we provide them the opportunities to pursue their own interests and passions. Offering students this as part of their education tells them that their own desires are critical to the learning process. It also asks them the most important question a teacher can ask: “What do you want to learn?”

When I taught as a math teacher in North Carolina, I was fortunate to see this at work with our school requiring every senior to present a speech that encompassed something they were passionate about. We saw tremendous creativity, talent and skill emerge as students explored cooking, video game programming, yoga, astronautics, andmauto design.

I happened to teach students of various grades and learned to find creative ways to offer a similar experiences to my other students. Now I appreciate this practice more tan ever practice of offering students the hours and resources to develop passion projects on the side. Since then, I encourage teachers of all grade levels and in all subject areas, the value of offering students passion time (named “20time” by Google Educators Academy) at school.

This set aside time could be scheduled for one day a week, one hour a day. I’ve seen this type of program be successful in my wife’s kindergarten class, with senior projects, and in every grade in between. I’ve also seen it work at the various schools that I taught at.

One that I recall with fondness was that of a school in New York City; the Bronx; to be more precise a High School not too far from the Yankee Stadium where our visionary Principal created the Passion project as part of the school culture. All students spend their entire Wednesday working on a project pursuing one of their passions, and all the teachers at the school were involved (at least two teachers were required to sign off on each project before a student begun). The students build windmills, painted murals, produced illustrated books, to name a few. The evidence of their learning was all over the school.

These students have ownership over their own learning, and they had a school with the courageous leadership and empowered teachers needed to make that happen.

Creating kids as innovators part 1

We, educators live in an age when our job is to move students go beyond memorizing a things they might need someday. These days a smartphone and quick Google search are able to do that. Our true job is to get students ready for the future by helping them learn to access and use information in ways that are meaningful to them. To motivate their innate desire to learn about their world (and improve it).

It’s important that we provide them the opportunities to pursue their own interests and passions. Offering students this as part of their education tells them that their own desires are critical to the learning process. It also asks them the most important question a teacher can ask: “What do you want to learn?”

When I taught as a math teacher in North Carolina, I was fortunate to see this at work with our school requiring every senior to present a speech that encompassed something they were passionate about. We saw tremendous creativity, talent and skill emerge as students explored cooking, video game programming, yoga, astronautics, andmauto design.

I happened to teach students of various grades and learned to find creative ways to offer a similar experiences to my other students. Now I appreciate this practice more tan ever practice of offering students the hours and resources to develop passion projects on the side. Since then, I encourage teachers of all grade levels and in all subject areas, the value of offering students passion time (named “20time” by Google Educators Academy) at school.

This set aside time could be scheduled for one day a week, one hour a day. I’ve seen this type of program be successful in my wife’s kindergarten class, with senior projects, and in every grade in between. I’ve also seen it work at the various schools that I taught at.

One that I recall with fondness was that of a school in New York City; the Bronx; to be more precise a High School not too far from the Yankee Stadium where our visionary Principal created the Passion project as part of the school culture. All students spend their entire Wednesday working on a project pursuing one of their passions, and all the teachers at the school were involved (at least two teachers were required to sign off on each project before a student begun). The students build windmills, painted murals, produced illustrated books, to name a few. The evidence of their learning was all over the school.

These students have ownership over their own learning, and they had a school with the courageous leadership and empowered teachers needed to make that happen.

What do Cartoons have to do with Learning Math?
What if children’s media could be as educational as it is entertaining? It’s a laudable goal. Lately there has been the rush of the creation of new educational television and digital media that educates students as it engages them. Children these days spend a lot of time on television and being online. It is a boon to use these tools to drive their learning math and literacy skills.
Today, new television shows on a variety of mediums have been released that have more educational content integrated in them with a variety of digital media such as interactive websites, mobile apps, or e-books. What is wonderful about the current drive is that, the approach of the creators is to connect these different media with common storylines or problem-solving. They then tested whether this “transmedia” approach might result in increased educational effectiveness when used with learners from low-income backgrounds.
There is a supposition that each of the different learning platforms have different strengths – for example, television excels at linear storytelling, while interactive games create opportunities to practice new skills. So therefore, the bridge was created between these platforms were to drive the students to work their way through a greater variety of content, to encounter a richer variety of learning strategies, and to better link experiences in the home, in school or pre-school, and “on the go.”
It is our hope that our ministry of education and science respectively encourages Scientists, Educators and IT companies to carry out targeted research about these multimedia approaches for students’ learning.
In the United States,researchers generally found positive results when using these products. For example, in one random trial conducted by EDC and SRI studying the use of PBS KIDS’ “Peg+Cat” transmedia among 4- and 5-year olds in home and family environments, children using the “Peg+Cat” intervention showed significant improvements on math skill areas such as ordinal numbers, spatial relationships, and 3D shapes
(To learn more about the “Peg+Cat” study, see:http://pbskids.org/…/r…/summative-evaluationsimpact-studies/).
This is very encouraging and should lead to desiring duplication. These educational strategies show enormous impact in educational technology. What was even more interesting was that this technology led to parents and caregivers spending time using media with their children, engaging together in problem-solving, and finding ways to connect their experiences to daily life it led to positive play and social interaction, and wasn’t passive. That means that the impact wasn’t limited to the child and the screen; this approach encouraged parents, caregivers and children to spend more time learning together.
Previously we needed to use different devices for different purposes; increasingly, we are now using a variety of different devices to access the same content at our convenience. We have a variety of convergent devices that can play video content, run interactive learning games, and be used “on the go.
We need application developers, tv programming and games here in Nigeria, and Africa as a whole that have long, more integrated learning experiences that are able to incorporate a variety of learning strategies without requiring children and their parents to move from one device to another.
We need to encourage the production of engaging, educationally meaningful content that works across multiple platforms. These would be able to leverage on all that I have shared here, use of analytics to collect learning data, and enable more personalized delivery of content.
We look forward to having our children gain from these efforts in the future.

Regular folks have a glorified view of the pursuit of scientific research. They believe that science is this organized, structured by rules when gathering facts for research, this is far off from the truth. Science is often eccentric, filled with twists, undertaking in uncharted territories, lots of wrong turns, bogus findings, and the intermittent remarkable success.

Contrary to popular belief, this is a good thing! Scientific research was based upon trial and error, with this, there is no guarantee for success, it leads inexorably to a hefty dose of failure.

In fact, scientists all through history have used failure to guide the scientific process, viewing mistakes as an indispensable part of research.

Now how do we translate this to our beloved children; our students?

Ngozi was an A student, she excelled at all of her academic work. She always won prizes at the end of the school year and loved the sweetness of winning.
Seated in the auditorium, amist her classmates, she loved the sound of her name being expressed over the speaker system; all necks craned in her direction; mumbles of ‘she again’ It was in her blood. She was determined that she was going to win overall best student when it was time for graduation.

This was her ultimate goal, the culmination of four years’ sweat and perseverance. She had easily made it every year on the Dean’s list and was favored to graduate Summa Cum Laude (1st Class.) Getting Magna Cum Laude wasn’t an option. No one of merit ever finished second. That would simply be a defeat. Failure was not something she was accustomed to or prepared to deal with.

Then Richard transferred to her school, he was par excellence personified. In her mind, however, Ngozi knew the competition was tough. It was to be all or nothing. Her parents certainly wouldn’t congratulate her on getting second place.

Thoughts of failure inundated her every waking thought and she quickly became her own worst enemy. With each passing day she grew filled with doubts about her abilities.

Fear of defeat insidiously crept into her resolve and she felt defeated already. She the constant victor had become the trounced scholar. On graduation day, she numbly stared as Richard delivered the Best Student’s speech. Failure by default was a bitter pill.

Ngozi had become wiser and she didn’t know yet. Previously she had known how to win because it had been all that she had known, but now she had also experienced the bitterness of defeat. This would prove to be very valuable over time.
She would go on to become a researcher who worked in a teaching hospital, writing publications and presenting at conferences. She was a fore-runner in her projects and was known to always preserve through difficulties. All of this would have been impossible without the lesson she had learned at college.

Though the story of Ngozi is a made up one, it’s a familiar one. Far too often children are frozen into inaction by a deep-seated fear of failure. The truth though is that wisdom grows with the number of attempts one makes, not merely the number of successes. Scientists know this wisdom forever, as attested to by Thomas Edison when referring to his work with light bulbs.

Scientific history has a lot of eureka moments—from Archimedes’ bath to Newton’s apple—but the scientific process entails lots of false starts that are vital to the advancement of science. Newton was wrong about two little things—time and space. Yet we would never consider Newton a failure. His flawed model led to Einstein’s incredible breakthroughs.
Almost all of science might be considered a failure, because scientific discoveries are continually being worked upon. Scientists progress from failure to failure as they move toward success in the short-term …knowing that there is a proclivity to be proven incorrect yet again. There is nothing to be feared in being wrong.


How do we translate this to our children? How do we make failure a positive outcome to them? We need to create an environment where failure, as a step toward improvement, was merely a motivation to keep going. To give your children the ability to be tenacious, teach them how to fail without fear, because they will unavoidably fail at something someday.

Scientists have learned that they are not their failed experiments, though the outcomes of those experiments might be considered as such. They are able to separate themselves from scientific outcomes. We should teach our children the same principle.
This is concisely expressed than by the Irish poet Samuel Beckett:
“EVER TRIED. EVER FAILED. NO MATTER. TRY AGAIN. FAIL AGAIN. FAIL BETTER.”

The next time you are faced with failure, get up and say; “Let’s do that again!” After all, the best way to convey the message of successful failure to our children is by example.

What do Cartoons have to do with Learning Math?
What if children’s media could be as educational as it is entertaining? It’s a laudable goal. Lately there has been the rush of the creation of new educational television and digital media that educates students as it engages them. Children these days spend a lot of time on television and being online. It is a boon to use these tools to drive their learning math and literacy skills.
Today, new television shows on a variety of mediums have been released that have more educational content integrated in them with a variety of digital media such as interactive websites, mobile apps, or e-books. What is wonderful about the current drive is that, the approach of the creators is to connect these different media with common storylines or problem-solving. They then tested whether this “transmedia” approach might result in increased educational effectiveness when used with learners from low-income backgrounds.
There is a supposition that each of the different learning platforms have different strengths – for example, television excels at linear storytelling, while interactive games create opportunities to practice new skills. So therefore, the bridge was created between these platforms were to drive the students to work their way through a greater variety of content, to encounter a richer variety of learning strategies, and to better link experiences in the home, in school or pre-school, and “on the go.”
It is our hope that our ministry of education and science respectively encourages Scientists, Educators and IT companies to carry out targeted research about these multimedia approaches for students’ learning.
In the United States,researchers generally found positive results when using these products. For example, in one random trial conducted by EDC and SRI studying the use of PBS KIDS’ “Peg+Cat” transmedia among 4- and 5-year olds in home and family environments, children using the “Peg+Cat” intervention showed significant improvements on math skill areas such as ordinal numbers, spatial relationships, and 3D shapes
(To learn more about the “Peg+Cat” study, see:http://pbskids.org/…/r…/summative-evaluationsimpact-studies/).
This is very encouraging and should lead to desiring duplication. These educational strategies show enormous impact in educational technology. What was even more interesting was that this technology led to parents and caregivers spending time using media with their children, engaging together in problem-solving, and finding ways to connect their experiences to daily life it led to positive play and social interaction, and wasn’t passive. That means that the impact wasn’t limited to the child and the screen; this approach encouraged parents, caregivers and children to spend more time learning together.
Previously we needed to use different devices for different purposes; increasingly, we are now using a variety of different devices to access the same content at our convenience. We have a variety of convergent devices that can play video content, run interactive learning games, and be used “on the go.
We need application developers, tv programming and games here in Nigeria, and Africa as a whole that have long, more integrated learning experiences that are able to incorporate a variety of learning strategies without requiring children and their parents to move from one device to another.
We need to encourage the production of engaging, educationally meaningful content that works across multiple platforms. These would be able to leverage on all that I have shared here, use of analytics to collect learning data, and enable more personalized delivery of content.
We look forward to having our children gain from these efforts in the future.

How Math Teachers are making the world a better place…



C’mon we gotta start with the positives 1st!!!



Math Teachers…



See how everything grew silent, that’s the powerful effect that they have on the world. Everyone has had math teachers, EVERYONE..even if you dropped out of school, you had a math teacher in primary school, and secondary school, right?

A few days ago, I ran an informal survey on my facebook page, asking friends to share their experiences about math in high school and I have posted the chart below with the percent breakdown. We have more math haters than math lovers (it would have been a higher margin, except for the following disclosure- a lot of my friends are professionals who use math on a daily basis and we made up the brainy bunch when we were in High school.)


I wasn’t surprised by the responses that I received, even amongst those that liked math when they were in High School, few attributed their love for it to their teachers, most gave homage to their relatives, friends and inner motivation. Amongst those who loathed it, their math teachers were spoken of with loathing, recrimination and regret.



One poster even recollected one of our most dreaded teachers in our school and yet, years later I shuddered at reading his name.

This morning I re-read the posts and imagined how differently the posts would have read if we had had well trained, motivated math teachers. We’d have people who were excited about estimating their bills, looking forward to working on their taxes and using math to problem solve day to day. I get so excited just thinking about that!



I am excited because I am that dreaded creature, a math teacher! Hahaha. Of course I wrote from the vantage point of self interest, I desire for everyone to respect us and treat us better instead of with dread.



My mission is to humanize math with both adults and children when I meet them. I show them math in everything, how real it is, how much fun it can be and how it is fundamental to life itself. I see math everywhere.



Mathematics gives order and eliminates chaos. It enables us to reason, be creative, gain abstract or spatial thinking, develop critical thinking, acquire problem-solving ability

Snails make their shells, spiders design their webs, and bees build hexagonal combs. These are but a few of the mathematical patterns in nature. There are countless examples of mathematical patterns in nature's fabric.



In our current age, we all have games around us, most games require mathematical logic and deduction. Without our math teachers who work so hard (haha) to imbue this knowledge in us, imagine the boring lives we’d have now.

Math keeps us safe, we use codes and passwords for just about everything these days. Yep, good old math teachers teach us about permutations and combinations in math class, both of which form the bedrock of cryptology.



Praise a math teacher today for the thankless job that they do, in fact statistics all over the world shows that we need more of them, so perhaps by your gratitude, you will make a difference in changing the tide.



Bless a math teacher, today, y’all!

How Math Teachers are making the world a better place…



C’mon we gotta start with the positives 1st!!!



Math Teachers…



See how everything grew silent, that’s the powerful effect that they have on the world. Everyone has had math teachers, EVERYONE..even if you dropped out of school, you had a math teacher in primary school, and secondary school, right?

A few days ago, I ran an informal survey on my facebook page, asking friends to share their experiences about math in high school and I have posted the chart below with the percent breakdown. We have more math haters than math lovers (it would have been a higher margin, except for the following disclosure- a lot of my friends are professionals who use math on a daily basis and we made up the brainy bunch when we were in High school.)


I wasn’t surprised by the responses that I received, even amongst those that liked math when they were in High School, few attributed their love for it to their teachers, most gave homage to their relatives, friends and inner motivation. Amongst those who loathed it, their math teachers were spoken of with loathing, recrimination and regret.



One poster even recollected one of our most dreaded teachers in our school and yet, years later I shuddered at reading his name.

This morning I re-read the posts and imagined how differently the posts would have read if we had had well trained, motivated math teachers. We’d have people who were excited about estimating their bills, looking forward to working on their taxes and using math to problem solve day to day. I get so excited just thinking about that!



I am excited because I am that dreaded creature, a math teacher! Hahaha. Of course I wrote from the vantage point of self interest, I desire for everyone to respect us and treat us better instead of with dread.



My mission is to humanize math with both adults and children when I meet them. I show them math in everything, how real it is, how much fun it can be and how it is fundamental to life itself. I see math everywhere.



Mathematics gives order and eliminates chaos. It enables us to reason, be creative, gain abstract or spatial thinking, develop critical thinking, acquire problem-solving ability

Snails make their shells, spiders design their webs, and bees build hexagonal combs. These are but a few of the mathematical patterns in nature. There are countless examples of mathematical patterns in nature's fabric.



In our current age, we all have games around us, most games require mathematical logic and deduction. Without our math teachers who work so hard (haha) to imbue this knowledge in us, imagine the boring lives we’d have now.

Math keeps us safe, we use codes and passwords for just about everything these days. Yep, good old math teachers teach us about permutations and combinations in math class, both of which form the bedrock of cryptology.



Praise a math teacher today for the thankless job that they do, in fact statistics all over the world shows that we need more of them, so perhaps by your gratitude, you will make a difference in changing the tide.



Bless a math teacher, today, y’all!

Well Said. Thanks for thinking of the Good of the nation more than personal ambition. A great Leader......

Crude Oil- a curse and a burden for the Niger-Deltan?
I am a Niger Delta woman! Yes, I can see the confusion as you look at my name again and you try to recall if today's date is April 1st. It's no joke, my lineage on my matrileneal side is from the Creeks in between the Mangrove forest and according to our tradition, our inclusion comes from our mothers. I agree with them, every child inherits the mitochondria of their mother in all of their cells and the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell organism within us. So your key building blocks are from your mother which goes to entail that a lot of you is from her.
I spent most of my youth in engine boats/speed boats going from Creek road waterside to Bonny waterside. I'd stare at the mangroove trees as we sped by on those boats, the waves trouncing us about and feeling the forceful rocking motions of the boats then. Watching the white waves swirl and then cascade in a crescendo if a bigger boat passed by. It was so mysterious gazing at the sea, imagining her containing the hippos my auntie had told me about in many tales. Wondering if I'd spot a mermaid finally as they were prone to desire adulation by us mere mortals.
Sometimes when it rained, they covered us with tent material to protect us from the heavy rain and it felt claustrophobic as we were encased within as the speed boats bounced about. My mother never went in a single engine boat, she always chose dual engine boats because she felt they were safer to cross with if one developed fault due to debris obstructing the oars/engine? It did happen once that we were in the open sea and one engine had a problem that had to be checked out and we stalled there as they kept trying to get it back in operation. My childish imagination kept wondering if a hippo would show up to capsize our boat. Back then, no one traveled with life jackets and I didn't know how to swim. I shared my fears with my mother who hushed me and told me that we never spoke of the hippo on the sea as that was a way of calling it. She also reprimanded me for talking of drowning, it was also another taboo when on water. My head reeled with all of this information as it was a lot for my child's mind but I had to accept it on a faith basis as my mother had water running through her veins as a daughter of the creeks.
I loved my mother's village, Oloma. She has a beguiling spell that she casts upon you once you get close to her shore. When I was a child, we didn't have a jetty there inspite of the fact that Shell had an oil well there. As a child, the only benefit I saw from there presence was cold, drinking water which my grandaunt would procure from their station in our village. We had no power or running water. No clinics for our sick folks and everything was very basic. Power came to our village eventually and an uncle got Shell to build us a jetty to make it more convenient for his highbrow visitors who visited the guest resort he built there. This same uncle took my siblings and I touring our neighboring creeks with canoes when we were little. He taught us to paddle and get our canoes to move. He took us to one of our little islands there and showed us the joys of fresh coconut meat and its water. I miss the simplicity of our villages in our creeksides.
When I chose to become a Chemical Engineer as a young teen, part of my desire was fueled by the need to clean up the mess the oil companies had done to our water and soil. I could barely see the benefits of the resource we had underground and I applied to the distinguished program at my alma mater, Syracuse University for a Master's degree hoping to address this issue. I stated this desire in my application letter and throughout my foray there, I was proud of my Niger Delta roots, all my Professors spoke to me about the politics of our situation and what were my plans upon graduation.
I had a lot of hopes then in my early youth, I was an idealist and believed that mere ideas- espousing them could change the world.
Fast forward to my return back home, the first time I visited my beloved Bonny, I openly wept. I wept for how she had been used by foreigners and her children, alike. How she had very little to show for how richly she had been blessed.
Yes, we have 24 hours power there but the standard of living is so high there that a lot of people starve daily. We didn't have a serviceable hospital until NLNG arrived on the scene in spite of the presence of Shell, Mobil and a plethora of other oil companies there. This huge gap has led to major loss of life including that of my wonderful, irreplaceable grandma who we miss with great pain.
Instead of being a blessing to us, the crude oil seems to be a blight to us. Our families are torn apart because of feuds having to do with the royalties from our oil wells. Employment is almost impossible to secure and insecurity is rampart in our creeks. It is painful because I visited Dubai and saw what their leaders used their blessings for. It hurts me acutely on so many levels because I love our Ijaw traditions. I love who we are; our warrior spirit, our pride, our strong survival instinct and our passion for life.
I loathe what the oil has done to our community and my heart bleeds for the irrevocable loss we have suffered. Sometimes, I wish I had the power to go back in time and ask for different blessings for us, not crude oil.

Nigeria and Independence--- At 56.
Time for the re-framing of her consciousness.
1st of all, let’s go over what we know about Nigeria.
You may already know that Nigeria is the largest black nation in the world and the most populous nation in Africa.
You may already know that Nigeria has great dependency on crude oil
Mainstream Western media believes that we are mostly a nation of scammers, drug dealers & a den of corruption.
The facts state otherwise…
5 IRREFUTABLE FACTS ABOUT US
1. The first television station in Africa was NTA Ibadan (1960) long before Ireland has their RTE station.
2. 60% of Nigerians in the US have college degrees. This is far above the American national average of 30%.
3. The designer of the famous car, Chevrolet Volt, Jelani Aliyu, is a super talented Nigerian from Sokoto State.
4. The World’s fastest supercomputer was designed by a world renowned inventor and scientist, Philip Emeagwali, a full- Blooded Nigerian whose patent was awarded in 2015. This means Nigeria has the patent to the world’s fastest computer: by a Black man and proudly Nigerian.
5. Before there were street lights in European cities, ancient Benin kingdom had street lights fueled by palm oil.
There is so much to be proud of our heritage. We have a verifiable track record of greatness. Our issue is that of good governance and management of our resources.
Which brings us to the main theme of this piece. We need to understand that our most valuable resource is not our oil; it is our people. All of our people.
We should seize the current opportunity to innovate and revitalize our economy. We should focus on growing our economy to diversify and encourage our investing in human capital development to produce the entrepreneurs, inventors and workers of the future. In other words, do what Singapore did, focus on restructuring our educational system for the growth of the ENTIRE nation.
As we can see our people blossom in countries where there is structure.
There needs to be major reform in our education and above all our mindsets. We need to empower our people to unleash their creative and productive energies to set up vigorous businesses which in turn leads to the creation of jobs which enables circulation of money across the economy.
Yes, we need radical reform to do away with bureaucracies and facilitate innovation relentlessly. We also accountable processes that ensure that public money gets us great infrastructure, education that our children deserve and healthcare.
The truth is THAT WE ALREADY HAVE WHAT WE NEED, WE DON’T HAVE TO THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX, WE NEED TO WORK INWARDS.

Why African History is relevant for Education, period![center][/center]

Build a solid foundation 1st with African history being inclusive in all educational pursuits.

This morning I posted a reflection of mine and one response back streamlined the thoughts I had after putting up the post.
Here’s the post-

Imagine children all over, passionate about learning and the effect that it makes in their world when they question and discover.



And here’s the response back- thanks brother-Olusegun Adesesan Bamgbelu

“It starts with them learning to love themselves, When my parents told me that it was the Africans that invented mathematics, with the Ishango bone, they calculated the volume of a truncated pyramid, that Imhotep was the father of medicine and a polygot.

Even the pure sciences of Physics,Chemistry Zoology and Botany are taught with a European slant. It leaves our kids wondering if Africans ever contributed anything to scientific knowledge.

The reality of the answer to that question brings up an interesting conundrum.

I have a lot of respect for Einstein, Planck, Kelvin, Fibbonachi, Euclid, but they were standing on the shoulders of giants, and those giants are our ancestors.”

It took me back to the years when I taught Mathematics to my beloved American children- New Yorkers, Californians, North Carolinians and South Carolinians. All our children in another land, yet still our children in our global village.
I had created a month long celebration of Black Mathematicians and Scientists after coming to appreciate this month long drive from my Alma Mata “Fordham University” which had a tradition of celebrating Women’s history month in honor of women’s contributions to society and the world at large.

I adopted that model because as I taught math and science, I saw the indifference my minority brethren across the span of the nation had towards the subjects. The rallying point came for me when a student much loved by me for his comedic antics in my classroom asked the pivotal question- “Why should I care about mathematics and science when my ancestors had nothing to do it, they discovered nothing, created nothing and when I listen to the news or radio I hear nothing about black or hispanic students involving math/science. Anyhow, black people aren’t good at math or science.”
I will never know how I kept myself from bawling out in frustration, grief and utter despair. Then I steeled up my resolve and realized at that moment that it was no accident that I was the only black person in the entire school and the community (I taught in a small community in the Central Valley area of California, comprising of a high migrant community- mostly Hispanic and Caucasian)
I stopped teaching that day and reached out to my students. I told them of my struggles with math as a teen, how lost Science- Physics, Biology and Chemistry left me until my mother made Chemistry make sense to me by bringing it down to my own understanding. The other people who also ignited my love of learning of science, going beyond mere recitation and actually discovering why it was important to the world.
I continued by explaining that in my educational journey, I learned about Western civilization and great thinkers. Yet, fortunately for me, my mother supplemented it with informal lessons about the greatness of my own ancestry. Their contribution to society and encouraged my independence as an African woman- telling me stories about great African women- Queen Amina of Zaria, Mrs Kuti to name a few.
Due to this strong foundation, I expected nothing less than excellence when I embarked on my educational journey.

I challenged my students to expand their understanding and expect that they would comprehend math/science.
I am proud to say that over the years I have had a low failure rate in my classes; always have engaged and empowered students.

The key difference is to ground a child’s inner self- it doesn’t matter where the child is from, what counts is ensuring that you stir the child’s spirit. Start from their past- their ancestors- their precedents and remind them that they too have the same power within.

Never discount this, it is critical

Listen, Listen, pay full attention. ‘Betta dey for 9ja o!’

In the doldrums of the rainy season, we all made plans for the winding down of the long vacation (as we term the summer holiday in Nigeria.) One could have never predicted how the holiday would draw to an end.

Inexplicably due to storming headaches and plethora of other issues, I spent close to a week in our University clinic running myriad of tests that showed me being in perfect health. At that juncture, sitting perplexed across an equally befuddle medical practioner who was also a Lecturer at our medical school at Unilag. After much consideration as we discussed my symptoms, she wrote a referral letter to LUTH for futher tests as we decided that this was the best course of action moving forward.

To LUTH, I went. LUTH is a behemoth unto itself as you have all heard. We got lost a couple of times we eventually got to where we were supposed to be. We were early, minutes past 7, yet we met a lot of people there already.

After all of the tests that were run there, two wonderful women whom I shall leave anonymous for the purposes of this article, saw the need for extreme measures due to my condition and recommended that we quickly go to UCH, Ibadan (the Teaching Hospital there) as there are more specialists in the area of my situation and a lot more equipment.

At first there was a sense of incredulity; was this a joke or what? Yet there was a sense of urgency with the tone that they used especially as they depicted my condition with models. So unto UCH, Ibadan we went.

If LUTH was a behemoth, UCH was gargantuan! It encompassed several campuses and was actually a lot easier to navigate . upon learning about it’s illustrious history, it made sense why it was laid out as it was. Like LUTH, we got there early but where equally shocked at the number of people already waiting. To be honest, I had heard so many negative reports of Nigerian hospitals and was filled with a lot of trepidation about undergoing any procedure in any of them.

When I went through the registration process, I was pleasantly surprised at how it had been streamlined as well as computerized. Of course, there were still hiccups. A lot of the stress was the Nigerian factor which was evident as we saw people who had been punctual about their appointments being bypassed by others who went straight to meet their Doctor friends or took their referrals from people they knew in the UCH system.

As was stated at LUTH, UCH’s Ophthalmology section was a lot bigger, there were more machines and a lot more specialists. People came from all of the country to seek help. As I interacted with people from all spheres of life during my duration there, I learned a lot about the psyche of our nation, Nigeria.

Getting back on track, I ended up being there for a period of time that was unprecendented by me. during that time, I learned to appreciate our unsung heroes and heroines. This ode is dedicated to them.

Let’s start with the Nurses who we all know are grossly underpaid for the grunt work they do yet are absolutely essential to the smooth running of any hospital, not to talk of one as big as UCH! They are the vital part of the machine that is UCH, they are always there for their shifts and are dedicated to their jobs. I became good friends with one nurse in particular who worked the graveyard shift, Nurse Maye. She is awesome! A kind soul who has absolute dedication for her job. Every night, she goes to each bedside, administers medications to her patiently nicely and soothes them with words of comforts. Early in the morning, she wakes them up and goes through her routine of checking the vitals of the patients. She is one of the many dedicated and nurturing nurses on call at UCH. They make being there a lot more bearable.

The Cleaners are also not acknowledged, when we were woken up every day by the nurses by 4-4:30 am, they ensured that we had steaming hot water for our bath, did their best in an abysmal situation- dwindling resources et al in recessive economy.

Now unto the Doctors, I am forever grateful to them. I am going to name a few here; starting from the worthy Head of Department- Dr Ogundipe, whose unerring dedication is an example to all. The Specialist and consultant Dr Oluleye whose focus and meticulous drive to serving others was a major inspiration (and motivation) to me. Everytime I spoke to him; during my operation and when I had follow up visits, I was filled with awe that he could have relocated like a lot of his peers for greener pastures thereby depriving us of his expertise, yet he has remained here with us. In fact he trains others and is magnimous about sharing his knowledge with others.

I am also very grateful to Dr Idiam who was very patient, gentle and encouraging throughout my stay. Without his excellent rapport and attitude, the trepidation I felt would have overwhelmed me and created an avalanche of being unable to handle the entire saga plus recover. I am in his debt forever and was encouraged by his service towards all of his patients. Dr Olajunji also reminded me that there is hope amongst our younger generation; that not everyone has lost the desire for academia in total- which in turn is beneficial for society as a whole because without teachers to instruct upcoming medical professionals, our healthcare system will grind to a halt. Imagining the calamity that would befall this nation should that occur is too frightening!

There is a lot wrong with our nation and in this case; our healthcare system. I witnessed a lot of it when I was there and it broke my heart over & over. The young father who couldn’t buy medicine for his son and weeping; desolate at his inability to ensure his son’s well being ( my mother gave him the money.) The single mother whose daughter was slated to go in for ophthalmology surgery but was unable to come up with the money and had to keep deferring an operation that is critical for her daughter’s vision. Or do we talk about the scores of people on the waiting list at the hospital? Our teaching hospitals are grossly underfunded, understaffed and have overworked people serving there. I choose to celebrate their effort and hope that as we encourage them, this leads to better morale for them as well as accountability to our leaders to really take stock of our health care system. It affects all of us!

Listen, Listen, pay full attention. ‘Betta dey for 9ja o!’

In the doldrums of the rainy season, we all made plans for the winding down of the long vacation (as we term the summer holiday in Nigeria.) One could have never predicted how the holiday would draw to an end.

Inexplicably due to storming headaches and plethora of other issues, I spent close to a week in our University clinic running myriad of tests that showed me being in perfect health. At that juncture, sitting perplexed across an equally befuddle medical practioner who was also a Lecturer at our medical school at Unilag. After much consideration as we discussed my symptoms, she wrote a referral letter to LUTH for futher tests as we decided that this was the best course of action moving forward.

To LUTH, I went. LUTH is a behemoth unto itself as you have all heard. We got lost a couple of times we eventually got to where we were supposed to be. We were early, minutes past 7, yet we met a lot of people there already.

After all of the tests that were run there, two wonderful women whom I shall leave anonymous for the purposes of this article, saw the need for extreme measures due to my condition and recommended that we quickly go to UCH, Ibadan (the Teaching Hospital there) as there are more specialists in the area of my situation and a lot more equipment.

At first there was a sense of incredulity; was this a joke or what? Yet there was a sense of urgency with the tone that they used especially as they depicted my condition with models. So unto UCH, Ibadan we went.

If LUTH was a behemoth, UCH was gargantuan! It encompassed several campuses and was actually a lot easier to navigate . upon learning about it’s illustrious history, it made sense why it was laid out as it was. Like LUTH, we got there early but where equally shocked at the number of people already waiting. To be honest, I had heard so many negative reports of Nigerian hospitals and was filled with a lot of trepidation about undergoing any procedure in any of them.

When I went through the registration process, I was pleasantly surprised at how it had been streamlined as well as computerized. Of course, there were still hiccups. A lot of the stress was the Nigerian factor which was evident as we saw people who had been punctual about their appointments being bypassed by others who went straight to meet their Doctor friends or took their referrals from people they knew in the UCH system.

As was stated at LUTH, UCH’s Ophthalmology section was a lot bigger, there were more machines and a lot more specialists. People came from all of the country to seek help. As I interacted with people from all spheres of life during my duration there, I learned a lot about the psyche of our nation, Nigeria.

Getting back on track, I ended up being there for a period of time that was unprecendented by me. during that time, I learned to appreciate our unsung heroes and heroines. This ode is dedicated to them.

Let’s start with the Nurses who we all know are grossly underpaid for the grunt work they do yet are absolutely essential to the smooth running of any hospital, not to talk of one as big as UCH! They are the vital part of the machine that is UCH, they are always there for their shifts and are dedicated to their jobs. I became good friends with one nurse in particular who worked the graveyard shift, Nurse Maye. She is awesome! A kind soul who has absolute dedication for her job. Every night, she goes to each bedside, administers medications to her patiently nicely and soothes them with words of comforts. Early in the morning, she wakes them up and goes through her routine of checking the vitals of the patients. She is one of the many dedicated and nurturing nurses on call at UCH. They make being there a lot more bearable.

The Cleaners are also not acknowledged, when we were woken up every day by the nurses by 4-4:30 am, they ensured that we had steaming hot water for our bath, did their best in an abysmal situation- dwindling resources et al in recessive economy.

Now unto the Doctors, I am forever grateful to them. I am going to name a few here; starting from the worthy Head of Department- Dr Ogundipe, whose unerring dedication is an example to all. The Specialist and consultant Dr Oluleye whose focus and meticulous drive to serving others was a major inspiration (and motivation) to me. Everytime I spoke to him; during my operation and when I had follow up visits, I was filled with awe that he could have relocated like a lot of his peers for greener pastures thereby depriving us of his expertise, yet he has remained here with us. In fact he trains others and is magnimous about sharing his knowledge with others.

I am also very grateful to Dr Idiam who was very patient, gentle and encouraging throughout my stay. Without his excellent rapport and attitude, the trepidation I felt would have overwhelmed me and created an avalanche of being unable to handle the entire saga plus recover. I am in his debt forever and was encouraged by his service towards all of his patients. Dr Olajunji also reminded me that there is hope amongst our younger generation; that not everyone has lost the desire for academia in total- which in turn is beneficial for society as a whole because without teachers to instruct upcoming medical professionals, our healthcare system will grind to a halt. Imagining the calamity that would befall this nation should that occur is too frightening!

There is a lot wrong with our nation and in this case; our healthcare system. I witnessed a lot of it when I was there and it broke my heart over & over. The young father who couldn’t buy medicine for his son and weeping; desolate at his inability to ensure his son’s well being ( my mother gave him the money.) The single mother whose daughter was slated to go in for ophthalmology surgery but was unable to come up with the money and had to keep deferring an operation that is critical for her daughter’s vision. Or do we talk about the scores of people on the waiting list at the hospital? Our teaching hospitals are grossly underfunded, understaffed and have overworked people serving there. I choose to celebrate their effort and hope that as we encourage them, this leads to better morale for them as well as accountability to our leaders to really take stock of our health care system. It affects all of us!

Nigeria and Independence--- At 56.
Time for the re-framing of her consciousness.
1st of all, let’s go over what we know about Nigeria.
You may already know that Nigeria is the largest black nation in the world and the most populous nation in Africa.
You may already know that Nigeria has great dependency on crude oil
Mainstream Western media believes that we are mostly a nation of scammers, drug dealers & a den of corruption.
The facts state otherwise…
5 IRREFUTABLE FACTS ABOUT US
1. The first television station in Africa was NTA Ibadan (1960) long before Ireland has their RTE station.
2. 60% of Nigerians in the US have college degrees. This is far above the American national average of 30%.
3. The designer of the famous car, Chevrolet Volt, Jelani Aliyu, is a super talented Nigerian from Sokoto State.
4. The World’s fastest supercomputer was designed by a world renowned inventor and scientist, Philip Emeagwali, a full- Blooded Nigerian whose patent was awarded in 2015. This means Nigeria has the patent to the world’s fastest computer: by a Black man and proudly Nigerian.
5. Before there were street lights in European cities, ancient Benin kingdom had street lights fueled by palm oil.
There is so much to be proud of our heritage. We have a verifiable track record of greatness. Our issue is that of good governance and management of our resources.
Which brings us to the main theme of this piece. We need to understand that our most valuable resource is not our oil; it is our people. All of our people.
We should seize the current opportunity to innovate and revitalize our economy. We should focus on growing our economy to diversify and encourage our investing in human capital development to produce the entrepreneurs, inventors and workers of the future. In other words, do what Singapore did, focus on restructuring our educational system for the growth of the ENTIRE nation.
As we can see our people blossom in countries where there is structure.
There needs to be major reform in our education and above all our mindsets. We need to empower our people to unleash their creative and productive energies to set up vigorous businesses which in turn leads to the creation of jobs which enables circulation of money across the economy.
Yes, we need radical reform to do away with bureaucracies and facilitate innovation relentlessly. We also accountable processes that ensure that public money gets us great infrastructure, education that our children deserve and healthcare.
The truth is THAT WE ALREADY HAVE WHAT WE NEED, WE DON’T HAVE TO THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX, WE NEED TO WORK INWARDS.

Why African History is relevant for Education, period!

african history 2

Build a solid foundation 1st with African history being inclusive in all educational pursuits.

This morning I posted a reflection of mine and one response back streamlined the thoughts I had after putting up the post.
Here’s the post-

Imagine children all over, passionate about learning and the effect that it makes in their world when they question and discover.



And here’s the response back- thanks brother-Olusegun Adesesan Bamgbelu

“It starts with them learning to love themselves, When my parents told me that it was the Africans that invented mathematics, with the Ishango bone, they calculated the volume of a truncated pyramid, that Imhotep was the father of medicine and a polygot.

Even the pure sciences of Physics,Chemistry Zoology and Botany are taught with a European slant. It leaves our kids wondering if Africans ever contributed anything to scientific knowledge.

The reality of the answer to that question brings up an interesting conundrum.

I have a lot of respect for Einstein, Planck, Kelvin, Fibbonachi, Euclid, but they were standing on the shoulders of giants, and those giants are our ancestors.”

It took me back to the years when I taught Mathematics to my beloved American children- New Yorkers, Californians, North Carolinians and South Carolinians. All our children in another land, yet still our children in our global village.
I had created a month long celebration of Black Mathematicians and Scientists after coming to appreciate this month long drive from my Alma Mata “Fordham University” which had a tradition of celebrating Women’s history month in honor of women’s contributions to society and the world at large.

I adopted that model because as I taught math and science, I saw the indifference my minority brethren across the span of the nation had towards the subjects. The rallying point came for me when a student much loved by me for his comedic antics in my classroom asked the pivotal question- “Why should I care about mathematics and science when my ancestors had nothing to do it, they discovered nothing, created nothing and when I listen to the news or radio I hear nothing about black or hispanic students involving math/science. Anyhow, black people aren’t good at math or science.”
I will never know how I kept myself from bawling out in frustration, grief and utter despair. Then I steeled up my resolve and realized at that moment that it was no accident that I was the only black person in the entire school and the community (I taught in a small community in the Central Valley area of California, comprising of a high migrant community- mostly Hispanic and Caucasian)
I stopped teaching that day and reached out to my students. I told them of my struggles with math as a teen, how lost Science- Physics, Biology and Chemistry left me until my mother made Chemistry make sense to me by bringing it down to my own understanding. The other people who also ignited my love of learning of science, going beyond mere recitation and actually discovering why it was important to the world.
I continued by explaining that in my educational journey, I learned about Western civilization and great thinkers. Yet, fortunately for me, my mother supplemented it with informal lessons about the greatness of my own ancestry. Their contribution to society and encouraged my independence as an African woman- telling me stories about great African women- Queen Amina of Zaria, Mrs Kuti to name a few.
Due to this strong foundation, I expected nothing less than excellence when I embarked on my educational journey.

I challenged my students to expand their understanding and expect that they would comprehend math/science.
I am proud to say that over the years I have had a low failure rate in my classes; always have engaged and empowered students.

The key difference is to ground a child’s inner self- it doesn’t matter where the child is from, what counts is ensuring that you stir the child’s spirit. Start from their past- their ancestors- their precedents and remind them that they too have the same power within.

Never discount this, it is critical

african history 1

Crude Oil- a curse and a burden for the Niger-Deltan?
I am a Niger Delta woman! Yes, I can see the confusion as you look at my name again and you try to recall if today's date is April 1st. It's no joke, my lineage on my matrileneal side is from the Creeks in between the Mangrove forest and according to our tradition, our inclusion comes from our mothers. I agree with them, every child inherits the mitochondria of their mother in all of their cells and the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell organism within us. So your key building blocks are from your mother which goes to entail that a lot of you is from her.
I spent most of my youth in engine boats/speed boats going from Creek road waterside to Bonny waterside. I'd stare at the mangroove trees as we sped by on those boats, the waves trouncing us about and feeling the forceful rocking motions of the boats then. Watching the white waves swirl and then cascade in a crescendo if a bigger boat passed by. It was so mysterious gazing at the sea, imagining her containing the hippos my auntie had told me about in many tales. Wondering if I'd spot a mermaid finally as they were prone to desire adulation by us mere mortals.
Sometimes when it rained, they covered us with tent material to protect us from the heavy rain and it felt claustrophobic as we were encased within as the speed boats bounced about. My mother never went in a single engine boat, she always chose dual engine boats because she felt they were safer to cross with if one developed fault due to debris obstructing the oars/engine? It did happen once that we were in the open sea and one engine had a problem that had to be checked out and we stalled there as they kept trying to get it back in operation. My childish imagination kept wondering if a hippo would show up to capsize our boat. Back then, no one traveled with life jackets and I didn't know how to swim. I shared my fears with my mother who hushed me and told me that we never spoke of the hippo on the sea as that was a way of calling it. She also reprimanded me for talking of drowning, it was also another taboo when on water. My head reeled with all of this information as it was a lot for my child's mind but I had to accept it on a faith basis as my mother had water running through her veins as a daughter of the creeks.
I loved my mother's village, Oloma. She has a beguiling spell that she casts upon you once you get close to her shore. When I was a child, we didn't have a jetty there inspite of the fact that Shell had an oil well there. As a child, the only benefit I saw from there presence was cold, drinking water which my grandaunt would procure from their station in our village. We had no power or running water. No clinics for our sick folks and everything was very basic. Power came to our village eventually and an uncle got Shell to build us a jetty to make it more convenient for his highbrow visitors who visited the guest resort he built there. This same uncle took my siblings and I touring our neighboring creeks with canoes when we were little. He taught us to paddle and get our canoes to move. He took us to one of our little islands there and showed us the joys of fresh coconut meat and its water. I miss the simplicity of our villages in our creeksides.
When I chose to become a Chemical Engineer as a young teen, part of my desire was fueled by the need to clean up the mess the oil companies had done to our water and soil. I could barely see the benefits of the resource we had underground and I applied to the distinguished program at my alma mater, Syracuse University for a Master's degree hoping to address this issue. I stated this desire in my application letter and throughout my foray there, I was proud of my Niger Delta roots, all my Professors spoke to me about the politics of our situation and what were my plans upon graduation.
I had a lot of hopes then in my early youth, I was an idealist and believed that mere ideas- espousing them could change the world.
Fast forward to my return back home, the first time I visited my beloved Bonny, I openly wept. I wept for how she had been used by foreigners and her children, alike. How she had very little to show for how richly she had been blessed.
Yes, we have 24 hours power there but the standard of living is so high there that a lot of people starve daily. We didn't have a serviceable hospital until NLNG arrived on the scene in spite of the presence of Shell, Mobil and a plethora of other oil companies there. This huge gap has led to major loss of life including that of my wonderful, irreplaceable grandma who we miss with great pain.
Instead of being a blessing to us, the crude oil seems to be a blight to us. Our families are torn apart because of feuds having to do with the royalties from our oil wells. Employment is almost impossible to secure and insecurity is rampart in our creeks. It is painful because I visited Dubai and saw what their leaders used their blessings for. It hurts me acutely on so many levels because I love our Ijaw traditions. I love who we are; our warrior spirit, our pride, our strong survival instinct and our passion for life.
I loathe what the oil has done to our community and my heart bleeds for the irrevocable loss we have suffered. Sometimes, I wish I had the power to go back in time and ask for different blessings for us, not crude oil.

[color=#006600][/color]