Page 162 - South Mississippi Living - April, 2023

FINAL SAY
MELINDA
JONES Musical Arts Instructor,
In the heart of Bayou View in Gulfport, there’s a beautiful renovation of a decades-old building and grounds. For more than 50 years, this beloved place has been fertile soil for the growth and development of young minds and bodies, first as Westminster Academy, and now
as Hope Academy. Here, many young talents have been nurtured, life-long leadership skills honed, and childhood friendships have become new families and even business partnerships!
In 2008, I was hired by Dr. Brenda Stiles to be the music teacher for Westminster Academy. It was an independent school founded by Jane White Stanley, whose dream was to provide a rich, multi- faceted education for her son and other Gulf Coast children. I was aware of the reputation of this exceptional school
– the successes of her alumni and the passion and quality of her staff – but as
I acclimated myself to the campus and classrooms, I quickly observed that this was an ideal place for educating the whole child.
When Westminster Academy closed
its doors in 2013, Hope Academy quickly established itself as the premier independent school for nurturing scholarship, leadership, and creativity on
Hope Academy
the Gulf Coast. With its main campus
in the Florence Gardens neighborhood
in Gulfport, Hope Academy is home
to unparalleled Preschool, Elementary, and Middle School Programs. The extensively-renovated Bayou View campus has recently reopened as a satellite location for Hope Academy Preschool, and while the buildings and grounds look brand new from head to toe, the heart of the facility hasn’t changed a bit.
Dear to my heart are Hope Academy’s unique educational programs, like our “Blues Trip,” which makes Mississippi music culture and heritage come alive. Hope Academy’s fourth-graders take
a three-day field trip to the Delta on
the Mississippi Blues Trail, where we visit several museums, meet working Blues musicians, spend the night at
the Tallahatchie Flats, eat lots of good Southern food, and hear firsthand stories from some of the Delta’s most colorful storytellers.
Another cherished part of my music instruction at Hope Academy is our annual Holiday Extravaganza, which puts Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Diwali, and other cultural celebrations on stage in a spectacularly festive musical production.
Each year I look forward to receiving input from my students about how they’d like to represent their ethnicities and faiths in the show. Our students find great joy in learning about each other’s traditions through food, song, and dance.
In my long teaching career, one of the most rewarding programs has been Hope Academy’s “Leader in Me,” a campus- wide process that helps our students develop enduring leadership skills. We work with each student to uncover his/ her genius, and then identify ways for
the children to put their gifts to use. Hope Academy students on a daily
basis lead everything from the morning announcements, to planning service projects and selecting charities for their various fundraising causes, to guiding their own parent-teacher conferences.
The reopening of the Bayou View Campus of Hope Academy represents
a rebirth of a tradition of excellence, its goal to prepare the next generation of Coast young people to place their marks on the world.
162 | April 2023
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