THE ‘SUSTY TEACHER’ CHANGING HOW CHILDREN SEE WASTE, SCIENCE AND THEIR FUTURE

There are teachers who teach their subjects, and there are teachers who make you look at education differently.

Alabi Abiola Olaide, popularly known as Susty Teacher, is one of them.

For Abiola, teaching is not just about completing a scheme of work or preparing learners for examinations. It is about helping children understand that they have a place in solving the problems around them. A Basic Science teacher at Aguda Junior Grammar School, Surulere, Lagos, Abiola has spent years working with learners and finding ways to make education more practical, creative and relevant to the world they are growing up in.

She is a Microsoft Certified Educator and SDG advocate, but perhaps what stands out most about her work is the connection she has created between education, technology and sustainability. She wants her learners to be creative, innovative and to understand that they do not always have to wait for someone else to solve a problem. Sometimes, the solution can begin with them.

This thinking is at the centre of what has earned her the name “Susty Teacher.” Abiola is intentional about modelling an eco-friendly lifestyle and bringing sustainability into the learning experience. As an Eco Ambassador with FABE International Foundation, she continues to encourage young people to think about the environment not as something far away from them, but as something they interact with every day.

For her learners, sustainability is not just a definition in a textbook. It can be a bottle cover, a carton or a piece of fabric that would ordinarily be thrown away. The question becomes: what else can this become? That question opens up a different kind of classroom, one where children are encouraged to use their hands, their imagination and their problem-solving skills; one where waste can become a learning material, and where learning can become an opportunity to create value.

Her commitment to helping young people turn waste to wealth has become an important part of her work, particularly because it connects environmental education with creativity and possibility.

But Abiola’s story is not only about sustainability. She is equally interested in preparing learners for a digital world. As a Microsoft Certified Educator, she understands that the children sitting in classrooms today are growing into a world where digital skills, creativity and the ability to adapt will increasingly matter. Her aim is therefore not simply to produce learners who know what they have been taught. She wants to raise learners who can think, create, innovate and use what they know.

That vision has also taken her into the wider conversation about what education can look like when teachers themselves become changemakers. In 2025, Abiola became an ASHOKA CTEACH Ambassador, joining a community of educators committed to bringing changemaking into education. It was an important milestone, but her CTEACH journey did not end there.

In 2026, she emerged as one of the Top 5 finalists of the CTEACH Changemaker Teachers Challenge. The two recognitions are different, but together they tell an interesting story about her journey. She became part of the CTEACH Ambassador community, continued doing the work, and returned to the Changemaker Teachers Challenge the following year as one of the teachers standing out among the finalists. It is a progression that speaks to something bigger than an award. It shows what happens when a teacher’s work continues beyond the moment of recognition.

And Abiola’s work has continued. Her interest in sustainability has taken her beyond her own classroom and into wider conversations around environmental education and climate action. She has participated in teacher-focused conversations and initiatives aimed at helping educators bring climate and sustainability issues closer to learners.

This is important because the problems today’s children will inherit will not be solved by knowledge alone. They will need creativity, collaboration, empathy and the confidence to ask difficult questions and try new solutions. And that is the kind of thinking Abiola is trying to encourage.

Her journey has not gone unnoticed. In 2021, she was among the top five teachers in Season 2 of the Teachers Naija Reality TV Show. In 2022, she was one of the recipients of the Alert Knowledge Service Global Teacher Award. She has also continued to receive recognition for her work as a teacher and sustainability advocate, most recently through her CTEACH Changemaker Teachers Challenge finalist position.

But if you speak about Abiola only through her awards, you miss the bigger story.

The bigger story is the classroom. The child who is learning to see possibilities in waste. The learner who is being encouraged to create instead of simply consume. The young person discovering that technology can be used to solve problems. The student who begins to understand that caring for the environment is not only the responsibility of governments and organisations, but theirs too.

This is particularly important in low-income communities, where access to opportunities can sometimes be limited. Abiola believes that children should not be defined by the limitations around them. They should be exposed to ideas, given opportunities to create, allowed to experiment and encouraged to believe that their ideas can matter.

That is why her work goes beyond Basic Science. Science gives her a subject to teach, but the classroom gives her an opportunity to teach something bigger, how to think. How to look at a problem. How to ask questions. How to find a solution. How to use available resources. And how to understand that even small actions can contribute to a bigger change.

Perhaps that is what makes the “Susty Teacher” identity so fitting. It is not simply about sustainability. It is about the kind of mindset she is trying to build in the young people she teaches, a mindset that says waste can become value, technology can become a tool for creation, problems can become opportunities for innovation, and young people do not have to wait until they are older to begin making a difference.

For Abiola Alabi Olaide, teaching has become more than a profession. It has become a way to raise the kind of young people she hopes to see shaping the future.

And with her growing work in sustainability, digital learning and changemaking, the Susty Teacher is showing that sometimes, the teacher changing the classroom is also helping to change what is possible beyond it.