Nancie Atwell, a long time educator from Maine, has returned from Dubai after accepting the very first Nobel Prize for teaching. She also received a prize of $1 million, which will be paid in increments over the next ten years.
CNN invited Atwell to discuss the honor:
“It’s recognition of the entire profession, that’s really the way I’m looking at it.
I think that was the intention of Sunny Varkey, who’s the founder of the Varkey Foundation. You know, to acknowledge all teachers and validate the profession at a time where I know he said ‘Kim Kardashian gets a million times more press than any teacher in this nation.'”
Atwell then discussed her plans to donate the million dollars to her school, which she founded in 1990:
“I have everything I need, but my kids don’t have what they need, but the school doesn’t have what it needs, including two new boilers. It’s a twenty-five-year-old school; we’ve got some twenty-five-year-old furnaces. I need to make sure that school exists for another twenty-five years.”
To those who want to pursue a career in teaching, she said the following:
“Honestly, right now I encourage them to look in the private sector. Because public school teachers are so constrained right now by the Common Core standards and the tests developed for children to monitor what teachers are doing with them.
It’s a movement that has turned teachers into technicians, not reflective practitioners and if you are a creative, smart, young person this is not the time to go into teaching [in public school]. An independent school would suit you.”
The CNN hosts roundly agreed with Atwell.
The post Nobel Prize Winning Teacher Who Gave Away Her $1 Million Award Unloads When Asked About Common Core appeared first on Independent Journal.