COURTLAND
Southampton Academy opened its doors for the 2016-2017 academic year on Wednesday, welcoming its faculty, staff and 422 enrolled students.

After loading off the bus or piling out of parents’ minivans, students were greeted at the front door by assistant headmaster Faith Best and director of transportation Fannie Byrd.

Best greeted students by names, and scanned classrooms to get hugs from students she missed as they came in.

“I didn’t get a hug from this one!” she said, as she bent to embrace a student in Lauren Jernigan’s second-grade class.

“Our team feels like we have the best teaching staff in the history of the school,” said headmaster Scott Wasdin. “We are continuing to raise the bar in terms of motivation and character development — our best tool for this is teaching our students the seven habits of effective leadership.”

As described in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey, the seven habits are a tool used by educators to teach students leadership, ethics and independence.

Educators around the globe, and even locally, such as Dr. Allison Francis, principal of Capron Elementary School, have also put them to use in the classroom.

“We are excited about our athletics programs at all age levels, and we hope our students are inspired to go all the way to the state championships again this year,” Wasdin said.

Last year, the Raiders’ competed in state championships in three sports.

“We are also excited to welcome 17 international students to the Raider family this year,” he continued.

One international student attended the academy in the course of the 2015-2016 academic term.

“We hope that this is a great year for everybody,” Wasdin concluded.