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Dropping out of school is a critical reality in the current context and María Francisca Elgueta (33 years old), the new winner of the Global Teacher Prize Chile 2022 (GTP), knows it well. The history teacher works at the Bretaña School in La Granja, Metropolitan Region, where her students are young people who have been excluded from the education system and have returned to the classroom to finish their schooling in a 2x1 modality.

"This recognition has made me question how to challenge myself more. In this award we are all reflected, all of us who are in the classroom", the teacher thanked, adding that she will continue working so that her students "feel that they have the world within their reach, that there is nothing they cannot achieve, that they can access things that seemed impossible".

At the award ceremony, Francisca - whose school belongs to the Hogar de Cristo's Súmate Foundation - was happy for the award. The teacher became the seventh outstanding teacher in the general category of the Global Teacher Prize Chile, an award known as the Nobel Prize for Teaching, which Elige Educar has been awarding in the country since 2016, seeking to recognize and highlight the effort and dedication of thousands of teachers in the country's educational system.

"This award not only allows us to recognize outstanding professionals, but also to inspire other teachers who are in the classroom, ensuring that the testimonies of these finalists and winners serve as an example with their pedagogical, transformative and innovative practices. In addition, we want them to serve as an inspiration to people who are thinking about their future and are considering the teaching profession as a career", celebrates Joaquín Walker, Executive Director of Elige Educar.

Claudia Uribe, Director of the Regional Bureau of Education for Latin America and the Caribbean OREALC-UNESCO Santiago, was part of the celebration of this award. "The Global Teacher Prize Chile makes visible the great work, professionalism and dedication of outstanding teachers from all over the country who move and inspire us with their example. These teachers transform the lives of their students and sow the skills that Chile needs to face the challenges of an ever-changing world and society. Unesco recognizes and congratulates them, thank you, teachers!

María Francisca Elgueta has been working at the Bretaña School for three years, where school reinsertion has been her main motivation. But her vocation to contribute to quality education in highly vulnerable contexts comes from much earlier. For years she taught in the network of schools of the Society of Primary Instruction, and later she was coordinator of innovation in the Ignatian Network. She also consulted for the Ministry of Education, where she worked on the development of a new curriculum for Youth and Adult Education.

"The educational spaces that we work today in school reinsertion, we have the important task of showing the students, each one of them, that they are worth a lot. When they drop out, to a large extent they believe that they are no longer worthwhile in that space, because they lose their academic self-esteem and because they feel that school is not a place for them, but for other types of people. It is the job of all schools to let them know that they are important members of the educational community", Francisca reflects on the school context in which she works.

In this version of the Global Teacher Prize Chile there were more than 2500 nominations and applications at the national level, among which Francisca's stood out. Along with the national recognition, the teacher will receive a prize of US$ 10,000, while the other four finalists in this category will receive US$ 4,000. The winner of the Music category will receive US$8,000 and the other two finalists in this category will receive US$2,500.

Since 2020, Elige Educar incorporated the Music category to the Global Teacher Prize Chile, with the aim of highlighting teachers who in this subject managed to generate positive and profound impacts on their students. This year, the award went to Manuel Puebla (34), a teacher at the CREE School in Cerro Navia. Manuel grew up in this same commune, always passionate about music, but without sufficient resources to take theoretical lessons or learn to play instruments. This led him to learn in a self-taught way, which would mark his way of teaching.

"We all have a different life, story and experience, we are unique beings. In a classroom there are 42 different universes and I like to think that we can give life skills to students, where music and neuroscience come together in a very nice way, generating changes at a general and social level," says the teacher.

According to Manuel, being awarded the Global Teacher Prize Chile 2022 has been a very valuable recognition for him and for the teaching profession in general. "We all need to work motivated, to have a light of hope that tells us what changes we can make. As a teacher, sometimes you don't realize the impact you are having on students until you receive nominations or awards of this kind. I hope that my testimony serves to motivate professionals or students to be inspired by the desire to teach and to be able to make changes in society, to give them a focus on what the teaching role is, giving more recognition to those who are making changes in different places".