Before the world called Peter Tabichi one of the greatest teachers on the planet, he made a decision that looked, at least from the outside, like a step backward.
He was teaching at a private school in Kenya with the kinds of resources science teachers dream about: equipped laboratories, a library and a computer room.
Then he left.
Tabichi moved to Keriko Mixed Day Secondary School, a government school in Pwani Village in Kenya's Rift Valley, where the contrast could hardly have been greater.
Classrooms were overcrowded. The school had only one desktop computer and an unreliable internet connection. There was no library. A single laboratory had to serve different sciences and different classes. Some students walked several kilometers to reach school, sometimes along roads that became extremely difficult during the rainy season.
Many of his students were growing up in circumstances that made academic success difficult before a lesson even began.
According to the Global Teacher Prize, about 95% came from poor families. Almost one-third were orphans or had only one parent. Some went without food at home. The surrounding community also faced problems including drought, early marriage, teenage pregnancy, school dropout and drug abuse.
Tabichi looked at those conditions and reached a conclusion that would shape his teaching career.
A teacher could not always stop at the classroom door.
He began giving away roughly 80% of his monthly income to help poorer members of the community and support disadvantaged students. Reporting at the time documented that the money helped some pupils pay for necessities such as school uniforms and books.
But money was only part of what he gave.
He gave time after school.
He gave weekends.
He visited families.
He built science clubs.
He searched for teaching materials online, sometimes traveling to internet cafés because his own school could barely get connected.
And then something extraordinary began happening.
Students studying science in one of the least-equipped schools in the region started competing against pupils from far better-resourced institutions.
They did not simply participate.
They began winning.
In March 2019, that work carried Tabichi from a rural Kenyan village to a stage in Dubai, where he was named the winner of the $1 million Global Teacher Prize.
The finalists had been drawn from more than 10,000 nominations and applications from 179 countries. Tabichi became the first African—and, according to the prize organization, the first male teacher—to win the award.
Yet when the attention of the world suddenly turned toward him, Tabichi redirected it almost immediately.
The honor, he said, was not really about him.
It was about his students.
And it was about what African children could achieve if the world stopped confusing a lack of resources with a lack of potential.
Leaving Comfort Behind
To understand why Tabichi's story attracted so much attention, it helps to understand what he deliberately gave up.
Before joining Keriko Mixed Day Secondary School, Tabichi had worked at a private school.
In an interview reported by Kenya's Standard, he described his former workplace as having modern laboratories, a library and a computer room.
Then he chose Keriko.
There he found barely enough classrooms, no library, only one laboratory shared by the sciences and a single computer.
The decision was not based on the idea that poor facilities somehow make teaching more noble.
They make it harder.
Science education, in particular, often depends on equipment, demonstrations, experiments, reference materials and access to information. A physics teacher who lacks laboratory equipment is being asked to explain concepts students elsewhere can observe directly.
But Tabichi believed that students in poorer communities deserved ambitious teachers too.
He had grown up in rural Kenya himself and studied science education at Egerton University. Teaching also ran in his family. In describing what drew him to the profession, he spoke about seeing the influence teachers could have on society.
His Franciscan vocation reinforced a philosophy of service.
Tabichi is a Franciscan friar, part of the Catholic religious tradition associated with St. Francis of Assisi and a commitment to simplicity and service to others.
That identity was visible even on the evening of his greatest international recognition: when he accepted the Global Teacher Prize in Dubai, he did so wearing the brown habit of his religious order.
But the important part of his story was not the symbolism of the clothing.
It was what his choices looked like on ordinary school days.
The Problems Followed Students Into the Classroom
For many children at Keriko, simply arriving at school ready to concentrate could be difficult.
Some pupils walked as far as seven kilometers to reach classes. The Global Teacher Prize reported that roads could become impassable during rainy periods.
Others arrived hungry.
Tabichi told The National that some students came from households where meals were uncertain, making concentration much harder. Classes themselves could include 70 or 80 pupils.
The official Global Teacher Prize profile put the student-teacher ratio at approximately 58 to 1.
For educators, those numbers are not abstract statistics.
They affect almost everything.
How long can a teacher spend helping one struggling student when dozens of others are waiting?
How do you teach practical science when laboratory access is severely limited?
How do you use digital resources when an entire school effectively has one computer and internet access is intermittent?
And how do you tell a teenager to focus on an equation when that teenager may be worried about food, school expenses or problems at home?
Tabichi did not pretend that inspiration alone could solve poverty.
Instead, he tried to respond to the barriers one by one.
Some needed academic support.
Some needed school supplies.
Some needed encouragement.
Some needed their families to believe that education was still worth pursuing.
That was why his teaching increasingly extended beyond normal school hours.
Why 80% of a Salary Mattered
The detail that eventually appeared in headlines around the world was startling: Tabichi was giving away about 80% of his income.
The Global Teacher Prize's official profile described him as donating 80% of his monthly income to help the poor. Other contemporary reporting was more specific, documenting that he used much of the money to support disadvantaged pupils with expenses such as uniforms and books.
The act was remarkable because Tabichi was not giving away money from the earnings of a global celebrity or wealthy philanthropist.
He was a schoolteacher.
The sacrifice was therefore substantial.
But his assistance did not operate simply as charity handed out from a distance.
He knew the children.
He taught them.
He met their families.
The Global Teacher Prize reported that Tabichi and four colleagues offered individual tutoring in mathematics and science outside regular classes and on weekends. Tabichi also visited students' homes to better understand the difficulties they faced.
That approach reveals something important about his philosophy.
A student who is failing a physics exam may not simply be “bad at physics.”
Perhaps the student has missed lessons because of responsibilities at home.
Perhaps the family cannot afford necessary materials.
Perhaps the student walks a long distance to school.
Perhaps hunger makes concentration difficult.
Perhaps nobody has ever seriously told that child that university is possible.
Knowing the student meant understanding the problem behind the grade.
A Science Teacher Without Reliable Internet
Limited technology could easily have become an excuse to reduce expectations.
Instead, Tabichi improvised.
Despite the school's single desktop computer and intermittent internet connection, the Global Teacher Prize reported that he incorporated information and communications technology into roughly 80% of his lessons.
When internet access at school failed him, he went elsewhere.