When one thinks of a hero, they usually think of someone with the ability to fly or read minds. Yet at Pembroke Pines Charter High School (PPCHS), heroes aren’t the ones with superpowers; their impact is far more real. Mrs. Perez, the PPCHS Broward Advisor for Continuing Education (BRACE), dual enrollment, and Edgenuity coordinator, is one of these heroes.
Before Perez worked at PPCHS, she was the testing and Advanced Placement (AP) coordinator at J.P. Taravella High School for eight years. Then, in 2013, she decided to apply for the BRACE advisor position at PPCHS and got the job. Her first official graduating class was in 2015.
Some responsibilities of the BRACE advisor include helping seniors with the college application process and learning about alternative paths outside of college. For example, if one decides to go straight to the workforce or even go to the military, she’s there to help with this process, gathering information for the students about their futures.
Mrs. Perez explains some of her responsibilities as she helps the seniors and their path to college. She adds how a part of her daily routine is “reaching out to [her] college contacts whenever there is an issue with a student’s application or when she needs clarification or support from the colleges.”
Furthermore, to aid students in the college application process, she hosts a “College Application Lab annually for about nine weeks so students can stop by to ask questions, complete their applications, and finish all required components.”
As she is also the dual enrollment and Edgenuity coordinator, she handles all students who take part in external courses: a vital job for the many students from freshman to senior year involved in these classes.
Dual enrollment is a program in which students enroll in local colleges like Broward College or Sheridan Technical College while being in high school. These courses give students the opportunity to receive college credits and improve their GPAs. Whether they’re receiving their Associate’s degree or just simple credits, dual enrollment allows students to get a head start on their college education.
Edgenuity is an online course recovery for students that allows them to get a better grade and understanding of courses they performed poorly on in the past. Any course that a student receives below a C in at PPCHS can be relearned in the program. This assists students with improving their GPA as well as bettering their understanding of topics they struggled with in the past.
Mrs. Perez adds that all of these things that she does “may sound like a lot, but [she] loves staying busy and working with our students.”
Although superheroes in pop culture have powers and wear capes, Mrs. Perez doesn’t need to in order to make a difference in PPCHS students. As she guides hundreds of students through the transition from high school to college and the application process, she’s certainly a hero to them.
