High school English teacher Keishia Thorpe won the $1 million Global Teacher Prize awarded by the Varkey Foundation.
As per the foundation, “she was selected from more than 8,000 nominations and applications from 121 countries around the world.”
This honor complements Thorpe’s previous awards: Maryland Governor Larry Hogan awarded her the Medal of Excellence and she was named National Life Changer of the Year for 2018-2019.
As the foundation stated, Thorpe “completely redesigned the 12th grade curriculum for the English department to make it culturally relevant to her students who are first-generation Americans, immigrants, or refugees from mostly Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and South and Central America.”
She also helped seniors win $6.7 million in scholarships just in the 2018-2019 school year.
Thorpe teaches at International High School in Maryland’s Prince George’s County, and she migrated to the U.S. from Jamaica on a track and field scholarship.
This experience has helped her carve a path for other students: she founded the nonprofit U.S. Elite International Track and Field with her twin sister, Dr. Treisha Thorpe, to help give “‘at risk’ student-athletes across the globe an opportunity to use their talents as a vehicle to access fully funded scholarships to U.S. colleges and universities,” the Varkey Foundation stated.