Ivana Kovačević, one of the Best Educators of Serbia, was ranked in the Top 50 Best Teachers in the World as part of the Global Teacher Prize
The non-profit, non-governmental organization "Živojin Mišić" last year selected Serbia's representatives for the Global Teacher Prize, which is believed to be in the ranks of the Nobel Prize for teachers. Ivana Kovačević, a teacher of Serbian language and literature from Belgrade, who works at the Dr Dragan Hercog Elementary School, ranked among the top 50 teachers in the world, among 12,000 nominations and applications from 140 countries, making Serbia once again on the top rank in the field of education.
The Global Teacher Prize competition competition has been in existence for six years and is organized by the Varkey Foundation, in partnership with UNESCO starting this year. It aims to find the best teachers in the world, and to show that their profession is one of the most valuable for any society, because teachers are the ones who educate our children and thus create a better future for each country.
The winners of this competition so far come from the United States, Palestine, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Kenya, and this year, Serbia once again has the opportunity to take the first place. This opportunity was given to Ivana, who was also congratulated by Sunny Varkey himself, founder of the Varkey Foundation and the Global Teacher Prize. "Congratulations to Ivana Kovačević on entering the final 50. I hope her story inspires those who want to pursue a teaching profession and highlights the amazing work that teachers do every day around the world."
Ivana Kovačević graduated, completed her master's degree, and is now completing her PhD studies at the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade. She teaches Serbian language and literature at the Dr Dragan Hercog Elementary School, where classes are held in hospitals and students' homes. She has won many awards, and participates in national projects and trainings. She is proud of her online literary section, which has been awarded multiple times at the republican competition, and its members have won 79 individual literary awards at literary competitions and events so far. In addition, Ivana participated in creating numerous free and publicly available digital educational resources, of which the “Final Exam” platform was awarded at the “Zero Project 2020” world competition.
Her motto is "Every child learns and expresses himself in his own way, and that is the magic of our profession.".
Dr Dragan Hercog Elementary School is a unique national school in which teaching takes place in hospitals and at home, or the school organizes distance learning for students going for treatment abroad. The mission of the school is to provide students with a quality, continuous and stimulating work environment, in which they will acquire new skills, encouraged by the ability to continue their education smoothly.
In addition, Ivana also holds the title of one of the Best Educators of Serbia, which she was awarded by Zivojin Misic Association in 2018 as part of the eponymous project, which also brought the Global Teacher Prize to Serbia. As the national partner of the Varkey Foundation which organizes this world competition, for the third year in a row Živojin Mišić Association has been selecting teachers who are representing our country on the global stage.
Ivana's biography can also be found on the official website of the Global Teacher hereand you can also take a look at the film about her work, which we made for the purposes of this competition here.
Once again, we would like to congratulate our national representatives this year, Borko Petrović, an English teacher from Paraćin, and Zoran Ilić, a teacher from Leskovac. All three of them are “masters of the craft”, experts in their fields who represent our country with dignity and have been defending the colors of education for many years! We are honored to work with them and have them on our team! You can read more about this year's selection here.
The Global Teacher Prize awards the world's best teacher with a $1 million award, which is not a personal reward for the teacher, but must be invested in education in the local community or nationally.
Among the Top 50, the Global Teacher Prize will select the top 10 teachers in June, and the winner announcement is scheduled for October, in London, UK.
We wish Ivana good luck in the upcoming competition!