Aysel Şener

Aysel Şener is a nationally recognised Turkish educator whose life story and 22-year career embody perseverance, innovation, and an unwavering commitment to educational equity, moral values, and ecological sustainability. Born in a disadvantaged village where girls were rarely allowed to attend school, Aysel defied expectations by walking 4 km each day to the nearest middle school and graduating as the top of her class. She completed high school and university with honours, becoming the second woman to graduate from her village and the first female teacher appointed to the place where she began her career. 

Throughout her career, Aysel has worked in extremely challenging environments, including high-risk neighbourhoods marked by severe poverty, unemployment, violence, drug exposure, and fragile family structures. She has taught students under state protection and has tirelessly fought to remove barriers to their learning through flexible lesson schedules, after-school tutoring, parent education seminars, food and material aid campaigns, and close collaboration with social services, the police, and local education authorities. Her social responsibility project, “Let’s Compete in Kindness, Unite in Love,” strengthened parent-teacher-student collaboration and positively transformed the school community.

Through these classroom efforts, Aysel raised her students’ average academic achievement from 60% to 95%, eliminated absenteeism, and doubled student engagement. Many of her former students are now doctors, judges, teachers, and police officers.

A pioneer in ecological and STEM-based education, Aysel has written 10 storybooks and two educational books and has led numerous national and international eTwinning projects. Her project “From Recycling to Life,” registered by the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office and recognized nationwide for promoting ecological awareness, stands out for integrating universal values, STEM concepts, and sustainability themes through storybooks and impactful educational initiatives.

Through her eTwinning projects, Aysel has collaborated with more than 100 teachers and over 2,000 students from many countries to create environmental campaigns and intercultural exchanges aimed at cultivating global citizens. Projects such as “Guardians of the Galaxy” brought together 1,000 students from seven countries, while her project “My Ethical Values” ranked among the top 100 out of 37,200 national applications, earning her an invitation to the 12th eTwinning National Conference. As a Scientix Ambassador and a volunteer for TEMA, Şener provides STEM training for teachers and frequently visits schools to hold talks and book-signing events for students and parents.

In recognition of her contributions, Aysel was selected as the Teacher of the Year for the province of Antalya in 2023 and was invited to Ankara as a guest of the President and the Minister of National Education.

Above all, Aysel is a teacher who cares deeply about global issues, embraces global citizenship as a core value, and believes in the healing power of kindness. She is committed to equipping her students with the skills needed to take their place in the 21st-century world. Instead of leaving a collapsed ecosystem to future generations, she inspires her students – through storybooks and international ecological projects – to take responsibility for the good of the future.

If awarded the Global Teacher Prize, Aysel plans to donate half of the prize to foundations supporting children with leukaemia – an issue deeply meaningful to her due to her mother’s battle with acute myeloid leukaemia – and invest the remaining portion in improving girls’ education.