An American teacher who helped make college education accessible to low-income, immigrant, first-generation American, and refugee pupils has won the ＄1 million Global Teacher Prize. Keishia Thorpe, an English teacher in Maryland, was selected from more than 8, 000 teacher in 121 countries.
"As a young girl from the circumstances that I come from, I would never have thought something like this would ever happen to me. I'm speechless, I'm overjoyed, I'm amazed. This is just an extraordinary achievement for me, " Ms. Thorpe said.
Ms. Thorpe teaches English to 12th-graders at the International High School Langley Park, where 95 percent of pupils are from low-income families. She redesigned their courses for the English department to make it culturally relevant to her pupils who are from mostly Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and South America. Since then, her English language learners have shown a 40 percent increase in their reading.
Ms. Thorpe spent a lot of time encouraging her pupils to apply for college and helped them with their applications and accessing fully-funded scholarships. She helped her senior pupils in 2018-2019 win more than ＄6. 7 million in scholarships to 11 colleges, with most of them not having to pay for their education.
She plans to use the prize money to give less well-off pupils an opportunity of receiving a third level education. "Every person deserves the right to education and I want to be that person who champions that for them. I plan to use the money to help students worldwide access higher education, " she said. "Students are the reason I'm here, so I plan to use that to promote them and create a better future for them. "
Organized by UNESCO and first awarded in 2015, the Global Teacher Prize is an annual award to a teacher who has made a vast difference to the profession. The winner of this year was announced at a virtual ceremony in Paris on November 10th, 2021.