Truly One of a Kind
Children who have not thrived in a traditional school setting benefit from the “uniquely beautiful” educational environment at New Hope Academy.
Licensed and approved in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, New Hope Academy (NHA) is a nontraditional private school in Bucks County, teaching students in grades 6 through 12.
NHA has two campuses in Bucks County, one in Yardley and another in Doylestown. When a family visits one of the campuses to begin their tour, they will often hear the administration use words such as unique and powerful to describe the school. By the end of the tour, the parents and their child tend to describe this one-of-a-kind place of learning as uniquely beautiful. They also feel the warmth, joy, and positive energy that Kathleen Rosso-Gana, the founder, president, and executive director of NHA and Motivational Educational Training Company Inc., believes is essential for real learning to take place.
“Kids come to us for many reasons,” she says. “When I founded New Hope Academy, I wanted to create a place where any child who was not thriving in a traditional setting for whatever reason can find their place. Many of our students come to us with a unique heartache, headache, or issue. This is one reason we seek to add joy to children’s lives. Children with nothing to lose are very dangerous people. From the beginning, we talk a lot. We meet with parents, teachers, administrators, to try to find out what’s happening with a child so we can try to fix it.”
NHA’s mission statement is simple yet powerful: “Head and Heart Before the Brain.” In other words, the school values not just a student’s education, but also his or her psychosocial and emotional development. The phrase encompasses many beliefs, values, and strategies of education that are ingrained in each teacher and student on a daily basis.
The student body is diverse, but each child understands that NHA is for all students who, for whatever reason, are not thriving in the traditional school environment. Often, these students have experienced many of the same headaches and heartaches before finding an educational home at NHA. Therefore, they support each other in an environment of caring and friendship.
On that first tour of an NHA campus, prospective families also notice a few of the most important reasons that NHA is also academically successful: small class size and a team of devoted, caring educators. Rosso-Gana describes the teachers of NHA as “the best in the business,” as well as “consistently happy, forever hopeful, and mentally healthy.”
In American society, there is much talk about the need to prioritize mental health among today’s teen population. Rosso-Gana believes more needs to be said and done to support teachers in their responsibility to stay stable on their journey with mental health. She is proud to say that this is a priority at NHA. After all, humans cannot give what they themselves do not possess.
New Hope Academy
www.newhope.academy
www.newhope.academy
301 Oxford Valley Road, Bldg. 1701
Yardley, PA 19067
(215) 493-4200
Yardley, PA 19067
(215) 493-4200
350 S. Main Street, Bldg. 303
Doylestown, PA 18901
(215) 345-9333
Doylestown, PA 18901
(215) 345-9333
Photo by Alison Dunlap
Published (and copyrighted) in Suburban Life, October 2022.
