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Teacher wins $1M Global Teaching Prize, plans to donate it to her school

Teacher wins $1M Global Teaching Prize, plans to donate it to her school

Yesterday, at a ceremony in Dubai, the Varkey Foundation handed out its first-ever $1-million Global Teaching Prize to 63-year-old teacher Nancie Atwell from Edgecomb, Maine.

The beloved writing teacher plans to donate her winnings to the school she founded 25 years ago.

"It’s like a miracle," Atwell said of the award which has been called “the Nobel Prize for Teaching.”

"It’ll mean life for my school for another decade."

Atwell’s million will help replace two furnaces, buy new books and go toward tuition assistance at the private school.

"It guarantees the future for so many children," she said, “and it continues our impact as a school on other teachers and their children.”

Atwell is the author of nine books on writing. Her independent demonstration school, the Center for Teaching and Learning, is considered a training ground for elementary school teachers from all over the U.S., where they can test new teaching methods first-hand.

“It is a great honour to receive the inaugural Global Teacher’s Prize,” Atwell said after receiving the award. “Nothing in my professional life gives me more satisfaction than helping students do or understand something worthwhile. I started the Center for Teaching and Learning because I wanted to work with colleagues to develop new methods, and send them out into the world for the benefit of other teachers and students. I am grateful that this award will help us continue this work.”

While most American schools moved toward standardized testing, Atwell’s approach to teaching the language arts focused on stories and self-expression, replacing required texts with those students wanted to read.

At Atwell’s school, there’s a library in every classroom, where students read an average of 40 books — and produce an average of 20 pieces of publishable writing — a year.

This volume of practice and constructive feedback is said to lead to “engagement, stamina and skill.”

Ninety-seven per cent of Atwell’s school’s graduates, many of them from poorer families, continue on to university.

"I worry that educational bureaucrats have a problem with pleasure," she said, “that if kids are enjoying what they’re doing, it can’t be rigorous or worthwhile.”

“[It] is very thoughtfully grounded,” one of the competition’s judges, Jordan Shapiro of Temple University, said Atwell’s teaching, “prioritizing the work learners need to do in order to become autonomous critical thinkers. What’s even more impressive is that she’s created an institution and framework through which to share it with other teachers.”

The Global Teaching Prize was created to raise the status of teaching, BBC News reported.

"We introduced the prize in order to return teachers to their rightful position, belonging to one of the most respected professions in society," said Sunny Varkey, founder of the Varkey Foundation.

He added that the prize is “not only about money, it’s also about unearthing thousands of stories of inspiration.”