Standing before hundreds of educators at the Yuma Civic Center Thursday night, Palmcroft Elementary 3rd grade teacher Hannah Martinez proclaimed, “to know a kid’s name is a privilege.”
The occasion was the 39th Annual Yuma County Teacher of the Year Banquet, where Martinez was named Yuma County’s 2026 Teacher of the Year.
While she hadn’t prepared a speech, her takeaway message to the crowd was, “Invest in public education, invest in your teachers. Protect your teachers and you’re protecting your faith and the future.”
And this was a message she learned from Yuma County’s 1998 teacher of the year, Debbie Martinez — her mother.
“I was privileged enough to grow up watching her spend her summers setting up her classroom, stay an hour before school, stay an hour after school, grading papers. She's missing dinner because she's at someone else's baseball game or showing up Saturday morning, someone's soccer game, and I thought, ‘God, this woman’s crazy,’” she said. “Who would go their whole life in school just to come back and come to this place?”
But when Martinez went to college and began taking education classes, it finally hit her, and it hit her again when she joined Palmcroft.
“I got to public education and I thought, ‘Oh, that's not crazy. That's passion. That's someone who believes in education. That is someone who sees kids, who recognizes it's a privilege to know a kid's name, not even just to get to know them, who they are, but the privilege to know their name,’” she said. “And because of her, I wish I could be half the teacher she is. I wish I could be because if I'm teacher of the year, then she's the teacher of the universe.”
As the crowd laughed and applauded her praise, her mother sat amongst the audience. While she was proud, she couldn’t quite agree with her daughter’s appraisal.
“There's an understanding now, but just when she shares, I can see her doing it,” she told KAWC. “I've never been in the classroom with her, but I know what an amazing individual she is, and she just, she blows me away. She says that she's not half as what I am, and that's not true at all. She is phenomenal.”
Debbie Martinez also teaches 3rd grade at Yuma Lutheran School, and it’s created a special connection between herself and her daughter. Although she teaches at a private school, Debbie echoed Hannah’s message about public education.
“One thing that I think is something that Yuma County needs to know is that she (Hannah) is a product of the educational system here in Yuma, is that she grew up going to H.L. Suverkrup and she's a graduate from Yuma High and a proud Criminal at that,” she said. “And so I think that we in Yuma should be very proud of the product of what our school systems are putting out there. We have amazing schools in Yuma County, and she is just one of many — you saw all of the teachers here are all deserving of this award.”
During her interview with KAWC, Hannah elaborated that her takeaway message for the crowd about public education came from her observations working at Palmcroft.
“We're one of the oldest schools here in Yuma and we've been hit really hard the past couple of years with natural storms, right? And ceilings are leaking, our carpet is not getting replaced. We've had structures in our playground break down,” she said. “And so, one, like financially invest in public education, we could really benefit from it, but also just like the support of investment.”
Martinez continued to explain that she respects school choice, but she wants the public to recognize that there’s value in the work teachers in public schools are doing.
“There are professionals in the classroom who know what they're teaching, who have a passion behind it,” she said. “So investing in our teachers is investing in Yuma and just supporting your teachers. I understand that there's a lot of things in the world right now, but teachers are supposed to be a safe space. Their classrooms are supposed to be a safe space, and so investing in the well-being of their classroom is an overall benefit for everybody.”
And in line with this thinking, Martinez concluded her speech by addressing the educators in the audience.
“Thank you all for everything you do,” she said.
Martinez wasn’t the only teacher recognized that night, however. The event, put on by the Education Foundation of Yuma County and the Yuma Rotary Club, recognized teachers in several categories. Here are the remaining awardees of the night.
Primary (Pre-K through Third Grade)
Claudia Alvarez, C.W. McGraw Elementary School (Yuma Elementary School District One)
Intermediate/Special Area (Fourth through Sixth Grade)
Teresa Teeter, Alice Byrne Elementary School (Yuma Elementary School District One)
Middle School/Junior High (Sixth through Eighth Grade)
Jonathan Bailey, Gila Vista Junior High School (Yuma Elementary School District One)
High School (Ninth through 12th Grade)
Gregory Brown, Gila Ridge High School (Yuma Union High School District)
Higher Education Recognition
Dr. Monica Ketchum-Cardenas, Arizona Western College Professor of History
Shara Skinner, Arizona Western College Adjunct Professor of Psychology
Dr. Monica Acosta Alvarado, Northern Arizona University-Yuma Assistant Teaching Professor, Business Administration
Dr. Bertha Mendoza Avila, Northern Arizona University-Yuma Adjunct Faculty, Criminal Justice Administration
Yuma County Education Hall of Fame 2026 Inductees
Elsie Jorajuria, Professional Educator Award
Mary Lackey, Professional Educator Award
Amanda Aguirre, Founder’s Award
Greg Fell, Francis Woodward Award
Yuma Association of Realtors, Outstanding Organization Contributing to Yuma County
Jason Maas, Estelle Dingess Award
Maria Villareal, Special Achievement Award
—
Reporting for this article is supported by a grant from the Arizona Local News Foundation.
