After a nationwide search, Fort Worth Academy recently hired Shannon Elders as the academic institution’s new head of school. It’s the school’s 35th anniversary.
Elders joins the Academy after 15 years at Currey Ingram Academy in Brentwood, Tenn., where she was most recently the upper school division head (2007-2017) and the previous upper school assistant division head (2002-2007), a press release stated.
“After admiring Fort Worth Academy’s stellar national reputation, it is a true honor to lead this exceptional academic institution into its 35th school year,” stated Elders, who began leading the administration at the start of the 2017-18 school year. “When evaluating the next steps for my career, I also took into careful consideration where my two children would be getting their primary education foundation.”
Elders and her husband, Skip, have two children at the Academy – a son, Tommy, in the eighth grade and a daughter, Kennedy, in the sixth grade.
“As a parent, I applaud the Academy’s decade’s long commitment to small class size in an environment which removes the fear of failure, rewards intellectual risk-taking and encourages the pursuit of personal excellence,” Elders stated. “As an administrator, I look forward to helping the students of Fort Worth Academy grow and thrive.”
Trained at Harvard Business School, Elders also holds a master of science from the University of Central Arkansas and a bachelor of arts from Harding University. She is a nationally-certified speech-language pathologist with numerous honors including being named a top three finalist for Nashville’s Emerging Leaders Awards in Education in 2008. Elders is a member of both the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD).
