Watch: Nigerian teacher offers free Mathematics classes through social media
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The Nigerian woman has also gone a step ahead and paid for the mobile data for the students who could not afford it
A lot of students have suffered in academics due to the coronavirus pandemic that sent the world in a lockdown, closing down schools and disrupting classes.
While some European countries are now reopening schools, it is still difficult for the second and third world countries to reopen schools without the fear of spread of the deadly coronavirus.
However, there are some people who are going out of their way to help students, especially the ones who are not privileged enough to hire personal tutors.
One such example is of Basirat Olamide Ajayi who is a teacher of mathematics in lagos, Nigeria. Six months ago, Ajayi came up with the idea of offering mathematics classes through Twitter, WhatsApp and Instagram, without charging a single penny from the students.
Now, six months later, Ajayi has reached an audience of nearly 2,000 students.
She takes help of these social media platforms to produce and share short videos in which she explains one concept in each video. These video clips are no longer than five minutes and Ajayi uses the simplest ways to explain the concepts to students.
To make sure the students practise, she also gives them occasional assignments and homework, and also grades them. She also makes sure that she answers as many queries as possible.
“Sometimes, I stay awake till 2 a.m. going through their assignments!” she said.
"COVID is here with both negative and positive impacts. The positive impact is that we can use technology to teach our students, which I am very, very happy about,” she continued.
The 36-year-old has also started receiving requests from across the borders now. “The online teaching has made me feel that I can actually teach the whole world mathematics,” she said. “On Twitter people see me all over the world, not only in Lagos, not only in Nigeria. They see me all over the world and that is enough to give me innermost joy.”
Her list of good deeds doesn't end here. She has also gone a step ahead and paid for the mobile data for the students who could not afford it. “Some of them don’t even have data to access the class, and that is not giving me joy at all, as a teacher that wants students to be online,” she said.