Third anniversary competition: The final contender
This entry is from Winners International Schools, Nkpor, Onitsha. The essay was written by the school principal who is also the founder, Mrs Chinonso Nwokelue. Next week we will announce the winner. We would once again like to thank all those who entered for the competition which is to identify schools that have been encouraging […]
This entry is from Winners International Schools, Nkpor, Onitsha. The essay was written by the school principal who is also the founder, Mrs Chinonso Nwokelue. Next week we will announce the winner. We would once again like to thank all those who entered for the competition which is to identify schools that have been encouraging reading and writing by providing the necessary platforms. It is interesting to see that most schools that sent in their entries were not from Abuja. Our best three essays were all from outside the FCT and this is the last one. Enjoy.
SUPPORTING READING AND WRITING AT WINNERS INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS
By Chinonso Nwokelue.
Winners International Schools, usually referred to as Winners Schools, is an independent school located at Onitsha in Eastern Nigeria. It educates over 3, 000 pupils, aged between 2 and 18 years and was founded in 1995. The school was founded by Mrs. H. Nwokelue in 1995, then as a primary school and in 2005, the need for expansion came in view and Winners International College was created with a few hundred students. Now the school has Nursery, Primary and Secondary sections. When Winners International College came into place we had lofty dreams of making it a citadel of learning. To be able to achieve this, we really needed to get the children submit to their books. To get children reading, we realized that we needed a library and books with modern touch. Library is no longer what it used to be – outdated books in hard copy. To get what we needed, we went for an update.
We took the challenge of getting all it takes to make children read and be useful in our century. We also brought computer system, modem for browsing and subscribed to daily newspapers. This is to ensure that we make reading not only attractive, but challenge our students to be up and doing.
We know that making a library available and stocking it with books is one thing and encouraging the students to make reading a habit is another. So what we did was to provide the students latest browsing tools where they can get all the tools they need to be able to do better and to make them learn that plagiarism is a killer. What we wanted them to do was to ensure that they grew independent of others.
Also, we understand that we live in a social media world. It is no longer news that young ones cannot do without it. Yet, that should not be an excuse for allowing them to be carried away by it. We tried to get to the hearts of the students, demanding that they tell us what should be done to put social media to good use. It was teamwork. We need them to help provide practical suggestions on how to groom them for tomorrow. They understood this motive and with their suggestion, we were able to build an empire of students who cannot go home without coming to the library to read.
So we allowed them to form a network of reading and writers club to take advantage of the internet and other available tools to do research. They have also been involved with social media to connect themselves with other schools abroad asking for collaboration in the sciences, arithmetic, history and literature.
As a teacher and trained journalist and founder of a Non Governmental Organization, I have access to nearly all the available writing competitions in Nigeria and beyond. So in Winners Schools, writing is a must, just like reading is. We provide them all available calls for essay competitions and because they must use the internet, they search from the internet to ensure they write impressive essays. What has resulted from this innovation and effort?
We have been leading in various competitions. For example in 2013 alone, we have won over 16 state and national awards and 8 international awards and we have received nominations for others. This credit is for the effort we put up in just a few years to make our students embrace the culture of reading. Even among our science students, we have impressive writers who overtime have been able to convince us that reading and writing are two things that cannot be separated as long as learning is concerned.
When it comes to reading, we make the wisest choice in our collections. We don’t go for anything. To be able to make this effort work, we ensure that our students read quality academic textbooks, literary works and few inspirational works. We also expose our students to compile quotes, daily newspapers and weekly magazines and any reading material that will help them develop mentally, socially and morally.
Knowledge as much as I know never just comes or goes. It is a product of hard work. When we read, we learn, when we learn, it remains with us. Even in dire circumstances, everything can be lost, but knowledge acquired from reading can never be taken away. As for choice of words and word research, we try to help them build their own style of writing and sentence structure that they create. We have the dictionary and we also have books where they learn how to build their own words. As we reap the gains of making reading the best legacy for our students, I lack words to express how I feel about it all. It has been great.