Seventeen Mount Airy City Schools K-6 teachers gave up a week of their summer vacation in order to wrap-up a year-long commitment to the NC QUEST initiative sponsored by Winston-Salem State University.

The program was made possible through a grant which was geared towards training teachers in the latest initiatives for working with struggling learners in the K-6 environment.

Among the cross-curricular strategies the teachers became familiar with were the latest uses of technology in the classroom, implementation of reading and writing techniques that connect the instruction of the growing population of diverse learners from within the Mount Airy City Schools system and the overall enrichment of all learners.

The NC Quest grant was initially offered for 12 months, however at the request of the participants, an additional 12 months was added to the funding period. A consensus among the participants indicates a real desire to become proficient in measuring fluency in emergent readers as a possible target for programming in the comig school year.