Inside one of Canyon Crest Academy’s history classrooms, learning doesn’t just sound like lectures; there's a lot of laughing.
The walls are lined with flags, artifacts, and inside jokes. They’re reflections of the man at the center of it all: Mr. Timothy Stiven, who's been working on something inspiring with his students.
"My students have the privilege of having this education, and I want them to have a purpose,” Stiven says.
Five years ago, Stiven founded Flowers for the Future International, in which students here in San Diego and across the world teach online courses to young girls in Afghanistan who have been shut out of school.
"It's better than a score on an AP, to show that they actually know this material by teaching girls on the other side of the world what they already know," Stiven says. "That's been the most rewarding thing for me.”
So far, students have helped educate more than 1,500 Afghan girls, with 40 earning online California diplomas.
"There is no other opportunity to really do that anywhere else. And he was really able to provide that," Canyon Crest Academy Senior Claire An says.
It was Stiven’s students in Afghanistan who nominated him for the Global Teacher Prize, a nomination pool of more than 5,000 teachers worldwide.
And now, he’s in the top ten.
"This is a win for all my students, for flowers for the future all over the world," Stiven says.
And even if he comes back home without the prize, his students say he's already won in their hearts.
But if he wins the one-million-dollar prize in Dubai, Stiven says the money would go toward expanding Flowers For The Future.
