The teacher of the year. Ranjitsinh Disale who won and shared a million dollars | Gramellini coffee

When Professor Ranjitsinh Disale asked where the girls’ school was in his assigned Indian village, the elders pointed to a hut attached to a stable. The students weren’t there either: one in ten went to class from time to time, the rest worked hard in the fields and were preparing to enter into betrayed marriages. None spoke the official language. So the teacher learned their dialect and translated the textbooks. Then, with the help of new technologies, in a prophetic mix of classroom and remote teaching, they are passionate about art and poetry, without neglecting mathematics. Now in that town the girls no longer marry. They all go to school and the first older student has just graduated.

That teacher was almost supposed to get the million dollars that each year is awarded to the winner of the Global Teacher Prize. And it was almost taken for granted that, when receiving the award, he spoke of the need to share knowledge and efforts: while doctors save the world, teachers have to save the future. But at the time, Professor Disale looked at the other nine finalists, including an Italian, adding: Let’s start by sharing the award. I leave you half the amount. And this, believe me, was not taken for granted at all. In fact, in many editions, it never happened. Nothing is more powerful than the word, when it is followed by a gesture that does not deny it.