- December 4, 2025
Old Kings Elementary School paraprofessional Suzanne Carter has been selected by the Florida Association for Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired (FAER) as the winner of the 2025 Outstanding Achievement by a Paraprofessional Award.
Carter will be honored at the organization’s convention later this month for making significant contributions in working with Old Kings fifth-grader Maverick Fitzgerald.
She was nominated for the award by Ginette Mora Diaz, who is Old Kings’ teacher of visually impaired students and is a certified orientation and mobility specialist with Flagler Schools.
Carter has been working with ESE students as paraprofessional for 15 years, but Maverick is the first blind student she has worked with. This is her second year working with Maverick. When she started, he wasn’t able to walk independently. Now he walks from one class to another while holding Carter’s hand.
“He has just come so far in the last year,” she said. “He has always been very uncomfortable in a classroom, but he's starting to find some comfort with friends.”
Mora Diaz and Carter have begun working with Maverick in learning Braille.
“He’s very interested in that,” Carter said. “His mother reads him stories at home, and I’ve told him, when he learns Braille he can read a story to Mommy. He gets a big smile on his face, and so that's his incentive. He is very smart, he is able to memorize things instantly.”
Carter will receive her award at the FAER convention Oct. 22-24 in Altamonte Springs. She is one of 10 statewide award winners in different categories that include, among others, Outstanding Achievement by a Person with a Visual Impairment and The Outstanding Educator of the Blind Award.
“It's truly an honor, and I'm just very thankful,” she said. “I feel that I'm only representing the wonderful team here at Old Kings. Everyone works very hard to ensure the best education possible for our children, and we call our four classrooms the nest. So I think that's an appropriate name. The kids are nurtured.”
