Daisy Mertens is a Dutch primary school teacher. In 2016, she was the winner of the 2016 National Primary Teacher of the Year in the Netherlands and she was among the top 10 finalists for the Global Teacher Prize 2019. She works in a large community-based school in Holland, with 440 students and up to 30 different nationalities represented. Her dream is for child participation to become the new norm in every school, with children as equal partners in dialogue, in the context of a community-driven school. She shares this dream with Number 5 Foundation, an incubator of social innovation and initiator of societal movements based in The Hague, where she contributes to High 5. This movement connects children and adults as equal stakeholders in the school ecosystem, laying the basis for sustainable and more effective education worldwide. High 5 does so through advocating and implementing child emancipation in schools, and through research and community-building worldwide.

Education, Academic, Education Reform, Education Motivation, Teacher Motivation, Teacher, Innovation, Motivational, Youth