A Choctaw County resident was awarded for her service and dedication to the children she teaches at her school.
Choctaw County resident Regina Weeks and three other instructors were presented with the 2016-17 Starkville/Oktibbeha Teacher of Distinction Awards during the annual meeting of the Greater Starkville Development Partnership (GSDP) on January 30, 2018.
The SOAR Community Foundation sponsored he meeting. SOAR stands for Starkville/Oktibbeha Achieving Results and was established in 2002 as an affiliate with CREATE, a 45-year-old public, charitable, community foundation.
These awards honor the service and dedication of outstanding school teachers throughout Oktibbeha County and were presented by Dr. David Boles, SOAR Board member.
The purpose of the award is to recognize, reward, and support teachers of distinction of grades kindergarten through twelfth grade in the Starkville and Oktibbeha public, private, and parochial schools. Students, parents, teachers, administrators, other school district employees or community citizens made nominations based on their observation and assessment of the teacher. The nominated teachers were then invited to submit an extensive application.
An external selection committee spent many hours reviewing the applications and chose the three award winners. Winners received $1,000 and a beautiful engraved crystal world globe representing the world awaiting their students.
Weeks teaches 9th-12th grades Choral Music at Starkville High School. Last school year, 24 percent of Starkville High School students that scored 30+ on the ACT were her choral students. As examples of what happens after they graduate from high school…one was just awarded the highest dollar amount given by the University of MS School of Music, two former graduates are on scholarship at Belmont University in Nashville in Music Performance, one now owns his own recording studio in Nashville, one just graduated from the Manhattan School of the Arts in Music Performance in New York, one is the coordinator for performances for the Kennedy Center, one is in Chicago doing “off-Broadway” shows…and the list of success is endless.
Among her own accomplishments, Weeks is a National Board Certified teacher. She has been recognized as the Starkville High School Teacher of the Year, the Starkville School District Teacher of the Year, the Outstanding Music Educator by the National Federation High School Music Association, and received the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) Earnestine Ferrell Award for the state of Mississippi.
“I view the lives of my students as follows: In the Art class, they are a blank canvass just waiting to become a masterpiece,” Weeks said. “In the Music class, they are a piece of manuscript just waiting to become a symphony. In the History class, they are just a page turn away from becoming a legend. In the English Literature class, they are just a page turn away from the story of their lives. In the Math class, they are just an equation away from being solved. In the Science class, they are an experiment of life. In the athletic arena, they are just a victory away,”
“No matter whether they are poor or rich, clean or dirty, highly intelligent, average or struggling, happy or sad, talented or not, like you or not—they deserve the best that I can give them each and every day.”
