KONK Life interviews, Theresa Axford, School Superintendent of Monroe County

KONK Life: I understand that the District has established a partnership with the College of the Florida Keys. Can you tell us about that partnership?

Theresa Axford: I’m so excited about this partnership. Because, Dr. Guevara and I have been meeting since the beginning of the year and planning how we could help one another and do things together. So, this year, because of COVID-19, we have started another school, which is the Monroe County District virtual school that has started with about 360 students in it, we have never had that before.  With COVID-19 parents have choice this year, if they wanted to, have their student in bricks and mortar or if they wanted to have them in a virtual classroom. The vitual school has really blossomed. But there are some students who are having difficulty being successful in the virtual program. So, Dr. Guevara, sent letters to all of his top performing students, at the college, to see if they’d be interested in working as tutors in the School District. And we’ve gotten an amazing response from them. They’re having a training program on coming Thursday and then another one next week. So, we’re going to begin that process and the students are excited about it. It’s really good to work with the college students, because our kids are going to respect them and are going to enjoy. As they’re young, kids may be gravitating towards younger people. And we think this is going to be an ideal opportunity for us and for the college students as well.

KONK Life: How big was the response from the college students to tutor the high school students?

Theresa Axford: Well, yes, we’re working on that right now. It’s not just high school students, but the program that we have is a K-12 in virtual classrooms. So, we have 360 students, who are working in virtual school now and those students are K-12. So, it’s kind of a whole different flavour for schooling in the Keys because of the pandemic. And we’re really excited about moving forward with this. It seems like it’s going to be amazing.

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