A Canadian school teacher who encourages hope and acts of kindness in an isolated corner of Quebec won a $1 million prize Sunday in what has become one of the most high-profile awards for teaching excellence, reports The Associated Press.

Maggie MacDonnell was awarded the annual Global Teacher Prize during a ceremony in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, beating out thousands of applicants from around the world.

She has worked for the past six years in a remote Arctic village called Salluit teaching middle and high schoolers. According to her biography, Salluit is home to the second-northernmost Inuit indigenous community in Quebec, with a population of just over 1,300, and can only be reached by air.