Maine instructor awarded $1 million Global Teacher Prize

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – An English teacher from rural Maine won the $1 million Global Teacher Prize on Sunday after 42 years of work as an innovator and pioneer in teaching literature.

Nancie Atwell plans to donate the full amount to the Center for Teaching and Learning, which she founded in 1990 in Edgecomb, Maine as a nonprofit demonstration school created for the purpose of developing and disseminating teaching methods. The school says 97 percent of its graduates have gone on to university.

“I really find that I’m validated every day just by the experiences I have with children in the classroom,” she told the Associated Press after receiving the award.

Atwell was selected from a pool of 1,300 applicants from 127 countries.

The top 10 finalists, which included two other teachers from the U.S. and others from Afghanistan, India, Haiti, Cambodia, Malaysia, Kenya and the U.K., were flown to Dubai for the ceremony. The winner was announced on stage by Sunny Varkey, founder of the nonprofit Varkey Foundation that focuses on education issues and founder of the for-profit GEMS Education company that has more than 130 schools around the world.

The award was created to be the largest prize of its kind and to serve as a sort-of Nobel Prize for one exceptional teacher each year.

Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who is honorary chair of the Varkey Foundation, were also on hand to give Atwell the award.

Atwell has received numerous other awards throughout her life for her innovative approach to teaching. She has authored nine books about teaching, including “In The Middle,” which sold more than half a million copies.

Hundreds of teachers have visited her center in Maine over the years to learn its writing and reading practices.

Her school’s eighth-grade students read an average of 40 books per year, compared to the national average of about 10. They also write extensively, and many of her students have gone on to become published authors.

All her students choose the subjects they write about and the books they read.