A Penygroes woman has been awarded Teacher of the Year after receiving a nomination from a parent of one of her pupils.

Karen Armstrong has been teaching at Penygroes Primary School for almost 11 years and has been off strong competition from 300 teachers across Carmarthenshire to be crowned the winner.

“I received a phone call from someone from Radio Carmarthenshire when I was in school and I actually said who’s playing a joke on me,” said Mrs Armstrong, who will be teaching Year 3 in September after previously teaching Year 1.

“They told me that it was not a joke and I had to have a sit down when I found out about the award.

“A parent of a pupil from my Year 1 class who will be going into Year 2 in September nominated me and it is still sinking in.

“I found out the news about a week to two weeks before the ceremony.”

Radio Carmarthenshire Local Hero Awards was held at Parc y Scarlets in Llanelli on Friday, July 20 and Karen decided to invite her husband along with her headmistress Janet Harris and her husband along to the ceremony.

“The awards ceremony was really emotional, and I had tears listening to everyone’s stories.,” she said.

“To find out I was chosen out of 300 other nominations by a panel was surreal.

“I am very proud, and it is still sinking in.”

Although she has been recognised for her excellent work, teaching was not the original career path Karen chose to go down.

“I was a fully qualified nurse before I became a teacher,” Karen said.

“For personal reasons I decided to swap jobs and I taught at Cefneithin School for a year before moving to Penygroes over 10 years ago.”

Discussing her award, Karen puts it down to the team work at her workplace.

She said: “At Penygroes School we are on big team. We all work together, and we were there to ensure that every single child has the best opportunity and every child is treated equally.

“I don’t feel any different to any of the other teachers after winning the award.

“As Mrs Harris says in assembly, we are one big family.”