Céline Haller, REP+teacher, ranked among the 10 best teachers in the world thanks to her innovative pedagogy

Céline Haller still can’t believe it. Thirteen years ago, she was just arriving in Rosa-Parks, an elementary school located in the Hautepierre district in western Strasbourg (Bas-Rhin) and classified REP + (Priority Education Network).

The lesson of that morning focused on the needs of the body and the organization. “But why are you talking about four meals a day?” Asked his CM1 students dumbfounded. “Breakfast, already …” she tries to list. The schoolchildren shake their heads, three quarters of them do not eat in the morning.

Breakfasts in class

The teacher then understands that, among them, there are tardle lifes, anxious with a knotted stomach, and others with whom the morning meal is a luxury. She sees herself at their age, savoring her tartins with the family, hearing her father read the newspaper aloud. The young woman then finds the parade: organize breakfasts in class.

The experience, limited to the start, becomes regular, twice a week. “I saw a before and an after,” comments the forties. Students remain more attentive in progress and dare to say more easily if they have not understood the lesson of the day before or if they undergo mockery.

Classified in the top-10 of the best teachers in the world 2025

Dynamic and creative, the teacher then imagines using this moment as a teaching medium. On days when yogurt is on the menu for example, its students get to know lactic ferments or discover The dairy and the milk pot of the fountain. Other mornings are the turn of seasonal fruit, with their name and their origin, such as kiwi, some of which ignore to existence. Without forgetting the math: children calculate the price of breakfast and check that it does not exceed 1.30 euros – the budget paid by the state for a student.

Because the idea has been emulated until the highest political spheres. Since 2019, the system has been extended to the entire national territory within the framework of the “poverty plan” and now benefits 300,000 children. This winter, the Strasbourg borne the tricolor colors in Dubai to the Global Teacher Prize – World Education Prize rewarding innovative ideas – organized by a philanthropic Emirates and UNESCO foundation. They were 5000 at first, she finished in the top-10 of the best teachers in the 2025 world! Enough to inspire his students, who either, still don’t come back.