In her final year before retirement, a longtime Starkville High School teacher has been named music educator of the year by the Mississippi chapter of the American Choral Directors Association.
Regina Weeks, who has taught choir at SHS for 17 years, received the award last Thursday at the organization’s state convention. In her time at SHS, the choral program has grown exponentially both in quality and in numbers, with almost a fifth of the approximately 125 students in the program making the Mississippi All- State Choir this year. The program also sightread music at a difficult level of five, the sole school in Mississippi to do so.
Weeks said winning the award was a humbling experience for her.
“There’s quite a line of winners in front of me, quite successful music teachers that have gotten this award,” Weeks said.
She described her early days leading the SHS choir.
“There were only four people in choir,” Weeks said. “They were sitting up on the second floor in a classroom, and there was a little ensemble of about 16 people, and that was the choral program. In two years it quadrupled, and then it quadrupled again.”
She said she had been blessed with talented students the entire time she has taught at SHS, and said many college and university choirs in Mississippi have recruited students from SHS.
“I consider myself a strong leader, but unless you’ve got the talent and the willingness from the students, you can be limited to what you can lead them to do,” Weeks said. “Again, we’re very, very blessed at this school to have a huge talent pool of extremely intelligent and hardworking kids.”
Senior Emma Crumpton, who has been in the choir her entire time at SHS, explained
what the ensemble has meant to her.
“No matter what I do now, I will have an understanding of myself and other people and how to present myself even if I don’t feel comfortable with something new, I can still go in and say ‘I’m good. I can do this, let’s do it,’” Crumpton said.
Crumpton will go to Northwestern University to study music in the fall.
After retiring, Weeks plans to judge choral competitions and teach voice lessons from her home in Weir. She said she will miss her students at SHS but is looking forward to less stress in her life.
“It’s their outlet to express themselves, and it means the world to them,” Weeks said. “For the true musician and the artist, if you take that away from them, then you’ve taken three fourths of their life away. That is who they are, and that’s their place in the world.”
The SHS Choir will present its spring concert, and Weeks’s final performance as the ensemble’s director at 6:30 p.m. on May 3 at First Baptist Church.