Wal-Mart awarded 20 Brown Elementary teachers with a total of $1,000 in gift cards last Friday morning as part of the Wal-Mart Teacher Rewards Program. The program aims to thank teachers for their dedication and sacrifice as well as help them purchase school supplies for their classroom since teachers often buy materials out of their own pocket.

The 20 educators at Brown Elementary were selected through a random drawing from a raffle at the morning assembly and are only a small portion of the 90,000 teachers each year that receive gift cards through the Wal-Mart rewards program amounting to a total of $4.5 million in donations.