The Aspiring Leader Academy serves participants in the Northeast Florida region and is delivered as a one-year leadership development program designed to recruit, train, support, and retain high quality leaders who will be able to serve as instructional leaders, increase student achievement, and close the achievement gap.

This Academy provides professional learning for participants who have a master’s degree in any content area. Successful participants will receive Florida Educational Leadership Certification and support to pass the Florida Educational Leadership Exam (FELE) if they have not already done so.

This program is for classroom and resource teachers, instructional coaches, counselors, and eligible district staff who currently hold a teaching certificate and either certification in Educational Leadership or a master’s degree in a field other than Educational Leadership and desire to be placed on a district’s Assistant Principal Eligibility List/Candidate Pool.

Please click on the “Aspiring Leader Academy” link on the right side of the page for more information.

The 2011 Duval County Teacher of the Year is Youmone Berrien. Ms. Berrien is a 10th-grade English II and writing teacher at First Coast High School and has been teaching for seven years. She currently wears many hats at First Coast High School; leader of the 10th-grade English professional learning community, student activities director, senior class sponsor, and co-founder of the Ladies First Organization. Ms. Berrien’s involvement stems from a philosophy that it is the job of the educator to “greet students at the entrance of academia, present them the tools needed to become productive, and guide them through our ‘real world’.” Congratulations Youmone! Read More (PDF)