CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Andrea Santos sits in her new 2016 Toyota Camry after being recognized by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin (right) as the 2016 West Virginia Teacher of the Year.
Santos, who also received a $5,000 check from Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, the other corporate sponsor of the award, gets to keep the car for two years.
“My 13-year-old, four-door, white Chevy Cavalier thanks you,” she told a group of about 100 people — including state Board of Education members, State Schools Superintendent Michael Martirano and House Education Committee Chairman Paul Espinosa, R-Jefferson — at a ceremony Thursday in the state Capitol.
She’s been a teacher for more than 20 years, three in Boone County and the rest in Logan County, where she’s alternately a Spanish, theater and film teacher at Logan High.
“It’s strange, it seems to me, that a Mexican-American woman raised in a Spanish-speaking household on a flood-prone creek in Logan County, is standing here…