Welcome home, Nancie Atwell

Mon, 03/23/2015 - 12:45pm

Over the past week, author and educator Nancie Atwell of Southport has been in a whirlwind of excitement and interviews, with people all over the world eager to hear her words of wisdom about teaching, the profession she loves.

Atwell is the first-ever winner of the Global Teacher Prize, also being called the Nobel Prize for teaching. There were over 5,000 nominations from 120 countries for the award, narrowed down to just 10 finalists. On Sunday, March 15, Atwell's name was called as the winner.

“It was like a hallucination at first,” Atwell said. “But then the teacher next to me gave me a hug and I realized that it was real.”

Atwell came home to Maine and joined fellow teachers, students, parents and former students at a special morning meeting on Friday, March 20 at the Center for Teaching and Learning in Edgecomb, the school she founded in 1990.

As is tradition in the school’s morning meeting, she sat in her rocking chair while the students sat on pillows in front of her. Along with the students, over 50 parents and former students were in the audience as well.

CTL has a maximum enrollment of about 80 students, from grades kindergarten through eighth grade, with students from over 20 towns around Maine. Atwell has announced that all $1 million of her win will go to support the school, which will be given in increments of $100,000 a year for 10 years.

At the meeting, students each handed Atwell a spring flower and received a hug in return. They sang a song written by their teacher, Ted DeMille, called “The Nancie Song” and read two poems, one called “Teacher” by Tess Hinchman (class of 2011) and one called “My Teacher Then and Now” written by the students in Atwell's daughter, Anne Atwell McLeod's, learning group.

“I was so homesick,” Atwell said. “When they were showing video clips of our students back home I would ache seeing your angelic faces.”

Atwell described being in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where the award was presented, as “beautiful, but not in the way Maine is beautiful.” She collected seashells along the Persian Gulf for one of her students who collects them, and shared stories about her trip.

“We all had flag bearers from a different country, and mine was Rue from India,” Atwell said. “He was a huge highlight of the trip. After I won, I saw him coming towards me and I put the guy from the Times of London on hold to give him a hug.”

She also talked about the huge amount of security around the winning name.

“Only five people knew before that envelope was opened,” Atwell said. “They used code names for us over the walkies. I was sometimes called 'Bob' — and sometimes 'Dumbledore'.” That got a cheer from her students and some parents as well.

A video was shown of dozens of Atwell's former students, now in college or beyond, thanking her for her teaching and congratulating her. Several times, Atwell could be seen wiping tears away during the video.

Just some of the uses for the money planned are the purchase of two new boilers, a new roof, new windows, carpets and sturdy bookshelves. Also as many more new books as possible, which will be helped by the gift of $1,000 from Atwell's publisher, Heinemann, presented on Friday morning by Vicki Boyd.

The money is for the purchase of young adult literature from their publishing partners. Money will also be used for tuition endowments, to help students from any and all economic levels to have the chance to come to CTL.

Representatives also came on behalf of Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King, who were unable to attend themselves.

“It goes without saying that the biggest winners are the students,” said Chris Rector, representing King. “This is a well-deserved recognition for someone who has made countless contributions to education.”

The meeting ended with everyone singing “My School on the Hill” by DeMille, and the students were dismissed to enjoy a celebratory cake. Atwell then spoke to reporters about winning the award, and most of all, about her opinions on the current state of education.

“(Teaching) is an intellectually challenging profession, one that should be elevated in our culture,” Atwell said. She spoke of the “dumbing down” of teaching as educators are given fewer opportunities to innovate and are instead told what to teach and how to teach it. She said she hopes to urge those who can make a difference to look hard at common core standards and the real effects they are having on education.

“It's harder and harder for teachers to develop new ideas that will further students’ growth and enact them, because (they've been given) a program and told to use it,” Atwell said. “If I were a creative, smart young person right now, I would not be inclined to go into teaching. I've not seen anything quite this bad in my 40 years in education.”

Atwell says one of the big things CTL does differently than other schools is give the students a choice of what books they read and write about in school. She says that when students can choose what to read, they become more engaged and excited about reading, and that students at CTL read an average of 40 books a year.

She told reporters Friday morning that: “You don't engage if someone assigns (a book). In high school I never read one of the assigned novels in my English class. I got along the way most kids do: I listened to discussions; I read the Cliff’s Notes. I was not engaged with ‘My Ántonia,’ or ‘A Tale of Two Cities.’”

Atwell also spoke about technology in the classroom being used incorrectly, and how, especially at young ages, actually holding a pencil to paper when writing is neurologically important, and reading e-books at night has been shown to impair students sleep patterns. She said it was important to be teachers first, and see if the technology can help the process of teaching.

“People just embraced all this technology, all these digital platforms and devices without ever investigating whether they were developmentally appropriate, whether they helped children learn, in fact, whether they made a difference,” Atwell said.

Parents and former students who attended the meeting praised Atwell and her teaching.

“I graduated in 1998, and started here in 1990,” said former student Sarah Duggan of Boothbay Harbor. “I loved the focus on reading and she introduced me to one of my favorite authors, David Eddings.”

“For years, Nancie traveled all over the country on weekends to teach teachers and then she would come back to teach in the classroom on Monday morning,” said Cherie Scott, mother of second-grade CTL student Sophia Scott. “This kept the school tuition low, accessible to students of all social-economic levels. And she did all this while raising an incredible daughter in Anne Atwell McLeod, who has now taken over the reins and carrying the CTL torch forward into its next era.”

“We are all still in shock, what an amazing honor for an incredibly deserving humble human being with extraordinary vision,” Scott said.