Nancie Atwell of Southport, Maine, won the prize during a ceremony today.
Atwell has been teaching since 1973 and founded the Centre for Teaching and Learning in Southport, which is a nonprofit demonstration school created for the purpose of developing and disseminating teaching methods.
The school says 97 per cent of its graduates have gone onto university.
The Global Teacher Prize is an annual, USD 1 million prize awarded by the Varkey Foundation, which focuses on education issues.