Head of School
Welcome to the Houston Academy website!
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Houston Academy is the unquestioned academic school of choice in the Wiregrass. As an accredited, college preparatory institution with a fifty year proven track record, it is easy to lose sight of the importance of other, significant characteristics of our tight-knit learning community – things like love. The Houston Academy story is, above all, a love story.
Part of my reason for relocating to Dothan and taking a job at HA seven years ago was because I knew that we would love living in southeast Alabama and that my daughters would love attending Houston Academy. We were right on both accounts. At Houston Academy, we love to seek and to find and to share! We love to help students work hard, have fun, and be kind, recognizing that, in life, knowledge must be guided by values. We love to hold students accountable to high expectations, and we plan diligently and work with purpose to help students meet and exceed those expectations.
We know that while it is important that we graduate good scholars, it is imperative that HA graduates good citizens and good people who love being responsible citizens in a global, connected world. We love to spend our days on our vibrant campus and in our refurbished and brand new buildings. We love to spend our evenings supporting our athletes and artists as they play and perform. We love to help students learn about themselves and to be comfortable in their own skin, both safe and secure. We employ a varsity team of faculty and staff members who still love to learn and who use that learning to inform and improve their practice. We would love to show you around our ‘home’ … not the place where we live, but the place where we belong.
So, please come and visit us, and you just might find that you and yours belong here too!
Go Raiders!
Regards,
Dr. Vince Janney, Head of School
1Our students are three times more likely to attend four year colleges, they are two to three times more likely to graduate from a four year college or higher, regardless of socioeconomic status, 13% more likely to do volunteer work, and they are more likely to become involved as citizens. Both the “National Educational Longitudinal Study” and the “Freshman Survey Trends Report” showed that graduates of NAIS schools were more active in civic life as young adults. Whereas 57.4 percent of all the students who participated in the “National Educational Longitudinal Study” voted in a presidential election as young adults, 75.3 percent of participating students from NAIS schools did so. NAIS graduates were also nearly twice as likely to volunteer to work for a political campaign than the group of students as a whole. Data from the 2005 “Freshman Survey Trends Report,” produced by the Higher Education Research Institute, revealed that 46 percent of NAIS graduates, and 36 percent of the total group, felt that “keeping up with political affairs” was essential.
