Florence Avognon has always had a heart for not just teaching students, but maintaining an influence in their lives after they pass through her classroom. For the past 18 years, including nine years at Central Juvenile Hall, a detention facility for students going through the court system, Avognon has done just that. Currently she teaches high school classes at the Phoenix Academy, a residential treatment program for adolescent substance abusers.

“Each day I enjoy the challenge of teaching at-risk youth because I know there are geniuses in the room who have yet to discover themselves.”

Part of her effectiveness as a teacher and mentor is to remind each new class of students that youth is fleeting. She shares with them that they were children longer than they will be teens, and that what they do for these brief six years can dictate what happens for the next sixty years of their lives. Avognon knows she has found her calling in life because of the everlasting impact she can have on today’s youth.

“I teach incarcerated youth. I imagine I have landed where I was destined to be my entire professional career.”

Avognon understands that teachers are essential to the development of not just the students but to the country’s future. She knows the value of the teachers she had growing up and how they have taught her how to become an effective teacher. Avognon believes that teachers act as partners between each other and the students they serve for a better tomorrow.

“Passionate, skilled, and dynamic teachers are able to take troubled and struggling young people and direct them to a brighter tomorrow, a more promising future.”

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