PROBLEM: In our schools we send out notes as resources to students and they are meant to copy out these notes. But we found that this takes up a lot of time and they barely engage with the material. 

SOLUTION: So I decided that instead of copying the notes word for word, they would just do the tasks that are inserted within the notes and this training is to get instructors to learn how to set creative questions that encourage critical, analytical and divergent thinking. This is not something that is prioritised in the Nigerian educational system. I used the Dick and Carey systems approach and I inserted a snippet of my thought processes below. 

At Eni Memorial High, we are completely disrupting the status quo in Nigeria. We’ve created a system where instead of students copying these long, uninspiring notes from a board or a textbook, they are guided into critically engaging with curated in-house digital notes and external resources through the use of evaluative and divergent questions.

To get this right, instructors in all our locations were taken through a blended training session that emphasised critical thinking, questioning creatively and the value of student engagement in learning. The presentation was used for the location I was present in. For the second location, I created a video using final cut pro and appointed facilitators to deliver the training, using a facilitator guide and a prompt document for the instructors.

We touched on some interesting things in our session from how colonialism informed Nigerian education to the different ways critical thinking shows up in informal childhood learning. We also touched on the disparity between the question models we are proposing in our schools and what the standard is for West African exams, which I found quite shocking.