Each year, DSST honors a graduate with the Distinguished Alumni Torch Bearer Award, recognizing someone who has taken the light of their DSST experience and carried it forward, illuminating the path for the next generation. This year, that honor belongs to Giselle Garcia-Gonzalez, DSST: Montview ‘17, who didn't just succeed after graduation. She came back to make sure others could too.
Garcia-Gonzalez is now a math teacher at DSST: Elevate, and the full-circle nature of that fact isn't lost on her. As a student, she was shaped by teachers who saw her, challenged her and refused to let her settle. Today, she is that teacher. "Now, standing on the other side," she said when accepting the award, "I can confidently say that DSST lives its mission."
What made DSST transformative for Garcia-Gonzalez wasn't just the rigor of the coursework - it was the relationships. She speaks with striking specificity about the educators who left a mark on her: Mr. Chan, who taught her in ninth grade and still supports her to this day; Mr. Heffron, who constantly pushed her to be her best; and Ms. Walker, who balanced care with accountability. "I can genuinely point to every teacher I had and name at least one way in which they positively impacted my life," she said.
That kind of being known, truly known, is something Garcia-Gonzalez carries into her own classroom now. It's not incidental to her teaching. It's the whole point.
As a first-generation college student and daughter of immigrants, Garcia-Gonzalez also knows firsthand what it means to navigate higher education without a roadmap. Her parents instilled in her and her siblings a deep belief that education is the path to greater opportunity, a belief, she noted, that DSST shares. "DSST walked me and my family through every step of the college process," she said. "That support gave me the confidence to pursue higher education at Regis University, where I sought out the same close-knit community I experienced at DSST."
She always knew she wanted to be a teacher. But it was DSST that turned that calling into a conviction. "We hold high expectations, provide rigorous instruction, and lead with care for the whole child," she said. "That combination empowers students to grow, achieve their goals, and believe that they are capable of achieving amazing things."
Garcia-Gonzalez's story is a living example of what DSST's mission looks like when it works — when a student from an immigrant family, navigating first-generation college territory, finds the community and support she needs to not only succeed but to return and pour that same energy back into the next generation. "It's an honor to now give back to the community that gave me so much," she said simply.
That is the spirit of the Torch Bearer Award. And Giselle Garcia-Gonzalez carries it with grace.
