Carmen Garcia with her Top Elementary Teacher award, sitting among confetti

Congratulations to Johnson Elementary third grade dual language teacher Carmen Garcia for being named Insite Brazos Valley Magazine's 2022 Top Elementary School Teacher in the entire Brazos Valley!

She earned the honor over nearly 100 other teachers who represented six different school districts in the Brazos Valley area. On Tuesday, her team at Johnson and representatives from Insite Media staged the surprise, which included Garcia's mom and grandmother, who made a special trip from Mexico to Bryan to support her.

This is Garcia's fourth year in Bryan ISD. She joined the District in fall 2019 after graduating from Texas A&M. In addition to being a teacher, she also runs the Johnson Elementary Student Council.

"It was an incredible surprise," she said. "Just truly my Johnson family planned this, so just shows what a great community Bryan ISD has and that everybody's just so caring."

Voting for the nominees happened online, and Garcia said some of her students saw posts about the award.

"It's just a great feeling to have my friends, my family here," Garcia said.