Magnus Bayuo’s journey to where he is today wasn’t an easy one. He started school very late at 10 years of age, and unfortunately had to drop out of school to help take care of his siblings. At one point in his life, he had to work as a gate-keeper. Despite all these financial and social hardships, Mr. Bayuo was determined to succeed in his education. He worked hard and saved enough money to fund his education. In 2003, he was admitted to St. John Bosco’s training college and later the Tamale College of Education.
Magnus is a farmer as well as a teacher. On the teaching front, he has been teaching for the past ten years and currently has one hundred and thirty-six students. As a result of his excellent teaching, Magnus has received 1st-place awards at the local, district and regional levels of the GNAT competition.
Inspired earlier in life by his headmaster, Mr Robert Buotom, Magnus had always wanted to be a teacher. Mangnus explains that Mr Buotum would set questions for him to answer and would always inspect the answers. This helped him focus on his studies.
Magnus Bayuo explains that his main source of motivation is seeing his students grow to become independent and useful members of the society. He is confident that they will attain great heights in the future. According to him, his profession requires him to expand his knowledge and experiences to prepare well before going to teach. He is gratified whenever he is able to explain scientific concepts to the understanding of his students. Because of this, he ensures that whatever topic he teaches, he makes the lesson very practical. He explains that he what he enjoys about teaching STEM is being able to find real-life application of every topic he teaches. Furthermore, Magnus has found that it is really a give-and-take situation as a teacher. He says, “Being A STEM Educator, I get to acquire knowledge from my students too.”
As a member of GAST, Magnus appreciates his membership which allows him to enhance his knowledge and skills, and makes it possible for him to receive assistance from his colleagues in teaching and experimental demonstrations.
When Magnus was informed of the JUNEOS Challenge, he got his students together and they selected an experiment and rehearsed ahead of the demonstration.
Magnus has been positively influenced by his participation in the JUNEOS challenge. From what he learned, he has made it a point to include more practical demonstrations in class, and is even more determined to improve as an educator. In addition, his participation in the competition has made him more confident.
He hopes that more schools will get to participate in the JUNEOS Challenge so that they too can gain practical STEM experiences. He also hopes that the JUNEOS team can provide teachers with some basic materials to help the schools in conducting the experiments for the challenge.
Stay tuned by following us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter (@wegoinnovate), Subscribe to our Youtube Channel and be informed!
Article by Kofi Konadu Berko.
Kofi Konadu Berko is passionate about education and youth development. He holds a B.A in Adult Education and Human Resource Studies from the University Of Ghana. His works have been published in the historic Afroyoung Adult anthology titled Waterbirds On the Lakeshore, Adabraka: Stories From the Center Of the World, Tampered Press and the Kalahari Review. He blogs at obolokofi.wordpress.com
He is a humble man from a very humble beginning.
congratulations big bro.
Thanks be to God for making this possible. I also wish to thank the organizers for moving to such villages like my station in order to make it possible. This is a motivation to the teacher and an upliftment to name of the community.
I’m proud to be a teacher.