21st March 2018 9:00
By Blue Tutors
A teacher from Brent in north London has won a competition to find the world’s best teacher. Reported on the BBC website, Andria Zafirakou teaches art and textiles, and said that the arts needs more support because it can transform students’ lives which is important for the poorest communities. The prize was created to give more status to the teaching profession and Andria received £720,000 for beating off the other competitors from 170 countries.
Mrs Zafirakou’s influence spreads beyond her contracted school hours; she recognised the problems encountered by many of her students which affected their performance at school. Encouraging students to open up about their home lives, many of them spoke about living in crowded accommodation, often with another family, and using the bathroom as an opportunity to be in a quiet place and do their homework. Mrs Zafirakou arranged after school and weekend lessons to combat this.
Despite many communities in Brent being among the poorest in the country, Andria praised the area where she works as being a “beautiful challenge” creating a “buzzing” atmosphere. The London borough has a diverse mixture of culture and languages with over 130 languages spoken. She has learnt basic phrases in languages such as Tamil, Hindi and Gujarati, and built links with families and the police to ensure students can travel to and from school safely, believing that schools should be “safe havens” in children’s lives.
The prize was awarded at an awards ceremony in Dubai, which Andria attended along with the other 9 shortlisted finalists. This shortlist was drawn from 30,000 nominated teachers around the world.