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Askwith Education Forum

Askwith Essentials: Who is Andria Zafirakou?

Global Teacher Prize winner Andria Zafirakou visits the Askwith Forums to speak on the importance of making an arts education accessible to all.

At the Askwith Forum on Thursday, September 27, Andria Zafirakou, recipient of the Varkey Foundation’s prestigious Global Teacher Prize for 2018 and an arts and textiles teacher at Alperton Community School in London, England, will address the importance of making an arts education accessible to all. Here’s what you should know before the forum:

An Advocate

In the United Kingdom, schools face a government push to focus on and fund “hard” subjects like Latin and mathematics. Despite this pressure, as an arts and textiles teacher, Zafirakou maintains that an arts education is incredibly valuable in teaching students life skills such as creativity and perseverance. Zafirakou plans on continuing her work in arts education by spending her $1 million prize money on projects that promote the arts in schools and the surrounding communities. 

An Innovator

Alperton Community School is in Brent, a diverse neighborhood that is home to some of the poorest families in Britain and has the third highest murder rate in the U.K. Zafirakou realizes this presents teachers and students with a complex set of challenges. “My calling in life is to make sure every child reaches their full potential. That I lock that, that I make sure whatever they need to achieve, I make it happen for them,” said Zafirakou in a video interview.

These challenges do not prevent her from ensuring that Alperton meets the needs of its community. She has built and fostered connections with the Courtauld Institute of Art and artists like the photographer Koo Stark to inspire and support her students. And, she coaches an all-girls cricket team for students from conservative backgrounds, offers boxing classes to empower students and teach them self-defense, and even walks students to their buses at the end of a long day. 

An Educator

Zafirakou was born in northwest London and attended schools in the Brent and Camden neighborhoods — the very same area she now tirelessly serves — and she has never stopped trying to understand those around her. She told The Guardian in March, “Instead of worrying about teaching the curriculum or making sure that you’ve got a strict classroom environment, build your relationships first. Get your kids on board, connect with them, find out what it is that they’re interested in. Build the relationship, build that trust. And then everything else can happen.” She taught herself how to greet and say goodbye in the 35 languages spoken by her students and can be found by the school gates in the morning and afternoon calling out to students in their native languages. She visits her students and their families at home to learn about their daily lives and uses that knowledge to inform the curriculum and the school’s teaching practices.

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