Nancie Atwell

Nancie Atwell is an American educator who in 2015 became the first recipient of the Global Teacher Prize, a $1million award presented by the Varkey Foundation to "one innovative and caring teacher who has made an inspirational impact on their students and their community".

Career
A teacher since 1973, Atwell started her career in western New York, but found traditional teaching methods constraining.

In 1990 Atwell founded the nonprofit Center for Teaching and Learning, a school at Edgecomb in rural Maine where students read an average of 40 books a year, choose which books they read, and write prolifically. She donated the $1million from her 2015 Global Teacher Prize to the upkeep, development, and scholarships of the school, which is also a demonstration school for developing and disseminating teaching methods.

Atwell has authored nine books on teaching. In The Middle: New Understandings About Writing, Reading, and Learning (1987) has sold more than half a million copies.

Selected books

 * In The Middle: New Understandings About Writing, Reading, and Learning (1987).
 * Side by Side
 * Lessons That Change Writers
 * Naming the World: A Year of Poems and Lessons
 * The Reading Zone
 * Systems to Transform Your Classroom and School