The world's best teacher was awarded 1 million USD

Ms. Nancie Atwell, an English teacher from Maine, USA, is the winner of the competition to find the world's best teacher with a prize worth 1 million USD.

Ms Atwell, 63, was honoured for her innovative approach to helping students improve their reading and encouraging them to read up to 40 books a year. At the award ceremony in Dubai on March 15, Ms Atwell said she felt honoured to be named the world's best teacher. Ms Atwell said winning the Global Teacher Prize was a farewell to the work she had devoted her life to, but the real value she received came from the response from her students.

Nancie Atwell, a teacher from Southport, Maine, USA, won the $1 million Global Teacher Prize in Dubai on March 15. Photo: AP.

"I really realized how useful I was every day just standing on the podium," AP quoted Ms. Atwell as saying.

According to AP, Atwell was selected from 1,300 applicants from 127 countries. Experts, including teachers and school administrators, will select the top 50 candidates. Then, an awards committee will further refine the list to choose 10 people. Finally, a panel of more than 60 people, including professors, CEOs, journalists and public figures, will evaluate each candidate to find the world's best teacher.

This is the first year of the Global Teacher Prize, created by the Varkey Foundation, a charitable arm of the GEMS education group, as a way to demonstrate the importance of teaching. The prize shows that teaching should be recognised and respected as a well-paid profession. The Global Teacher Prize is considered the biggest prize in education and is the equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

Ms. Atwell's students (center) read an average of 40 books a year, compared to the national average of about 10. Photo: NY Times.

Ms. Atwell plans to donate all of her prize money to the Center for Teaching and Learning. She founded the school in Edgecomb, Maine, in 1990. It is there that ideas for improving reading and writing are tested and shared. The school has libraries in every classroom.

Eighth graders at the school read an average of 40 books a year, compared to the national average of about 10. Ms. Atwell’s students also write well, and many become published authors. At school, students choose the topics for their writing and the books they read.

Hundreds of teachers have visited Ms. Atwell’s center over the years to learn her methods for teaching reading and writing. Ms. Atwell is also a prolific author, with nine books on teaching published and selling half a million copies.

According to VnExpress