Wheaton Elementary School Teacher a Nominee for $1 Million Global Prize

A Lincoln Elementary School teacher has been selected as one of 50 nominees vying for a $1 million global teacher prize.

Jacqueline Lopushonsky was among two other suburban teachers Monday to be selected as a finalist Monday for the $1 million Varkey GEMS Foundation Global Teacher Prize, which is widely referred to as the Nobel prize for teaching. The top 50 were selected from over 5,000 nominations from 127 countries from around the World.

Lopushonsky teaches reading, math and writing to fourth- and fifth-grade special education students at the school and has been with the Wheaton Warrenville School District 220 for the past eight years, the Daily Herald reports.

She has traveled the world and tries to travel overseas every summer. She shares her experiences in her classrooms and makes a point of educating children on other cultures by setting up kids with pen pals from other countries, organizing fund-raisers to help less-fortunate children and holding video chats with foreign classrooms, according to the Daily Herald.

She also spearheaded a writing project in which her school district partnered with a district in South Africa. Both sets of students wrote and illustrated entire books for the students in the other country, according to a Global Teacher Prize press release.

Lopushonsky is a Fullbright Scholar and has won a Golden Apple Teaching Award.

Other suburban nominees include Paul Solarz, a teacher at Westgate Elementary School in Arlington Heights; and Mark Vondracek. a teacher at Evanston Township High School in Gurnee.

The winner of the $1 million prize will be announced at the Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai on March 16, 2015.