“A LOG, A CEDAR TREE FOR SHADE, A SHEEP-SHED FOR A HOME, A DREAM, A VISION, A RESISTLESS URGE.” - LAURENCE CLIFTON JONES

Mission

We prepare leaders for tomorrow’s challenges by empowering learners, regardless of income, with a holistic approach that develops the head, heart, and hands, rooted in a faith-inspired community and inclusive African American ethos.

Vision

Since 1909, The Piney Woods School has been a beacon of empowerment and opportunity, dedicated to shaping the futures of underserved and underrepresented youth. Founded by visionary educator Dr. Laurence C. Jones, Piney Woods is rooted in a legacy of academic excellence, character development, and practical skills.

Nestled on a sprawling 2,000-acre campus in rural Mississippi, our historic institution remains committed to cultivating scholars, leaders, and changemakers. Under the current leadership of President Will Levi Crossley Jr., we continue to honor our rich heritage while advancing bold initiatives that meet the challenges of the 21st century. With a focus on innovation, sustainability, and community engagement, we are preparing students to thrive in an ever-changing world.

At Piney Woods, we believe in rigorous college preparatory academics, strengthened by a commitment to moral and social responsibility. Our programs encompass STEM innovation, arts and cultural enrichment, leadership training, and hands-on learning opportunities. As one of the nation’s oldest Black boarding schools, we proudly embrace our heritage while equipping students with the knowledge and skills to make a lasting impact.

Our alumni have gone on to become remarkable contributors to society, living out the values and vision nurtured during their time at Piney Woods. For over a century, we have remained steadfast in our mission—empowering young people to lead with purpose, integrity, and excellence.

Our Core Values

LIFE Squared

At The Piney Woods School, our educational philosophy is built upon the foundation of LIFE squared, a guiding framework that shapes every aspect of our community. LIFE squared stands for Love, Integrity, Faith, Excellence, and Empowerment. These values inspire and drive our mission to nurture young people into thoughtful, compassionate leaders.

Love: We believe in the power of love to bind us together as a family, where every individual feels seen, valued, and supported. This love fuels our commitment to helping students find their purpose and voice.
Integrity: Our commitment to integrity calls us to teach students to live purposefully, pursue justice, and honor both their spiritual freedom and the world around them.
Faith: Rooted in Christian values, we foster an environment that encourages personal fulfillment, collective harmony, and the discovery of one’s life’s calling.
Excellence: We strive for academic and physical excellence, envisioning a campus where every space serves as a classroom, cultivating intellectual curiosity and physical exploration.
Empowerment: At Piney Woods, we empower our students to discover true freedom through conscience and responsibility, preparing them to thoughtfully contribute to the world around them.

This framework is at the heart of Piney Woods, guiding us as we create a community where all students are equipped to thrive both in their personal journeys and in the world beyond.

Our Core Values

Faith

What is the contemporary calling of a Christian school that is committed to preparing young people for a complex, multiracial world? And what is the result of a long-term vision in which a core set of design drivers shape every decision at Piney Woods – from residential buildings to staff recruitment to course curricula?

We believe that it will be an enduring culture of enlightenment and a community in which all structures and systems are intentionally designed in order to facilitate both individual fulfillment, Christian charity, and collective harmony. To get there, we must be systemic in the way we understand the interplay between several unlikely pairs: School and Community. Individual and group. Inside and outside. Think and do. Push and Project.

Here, we are taught to love ourselves and one another. Here, we are given the freedom to name what drives us, and what we wish to commit our life’s work towards achieving. Here, we are taught about God’s great power and shown how to channel the great power that resides within each of us. Here, we are put in a position to discover the “resistless urge” that will guide each of us throughout our adult lives.

This is what it means to be a part of the Piney Woods School. This is the vision that will animate our next one hundred years.

Love

Piney Woods cannot exist without love, and without a clear understanding of the ways, it binds us all together. It is love—for oneself, for one another, and then, eventually, for one’s own unique learning journey – that undergirds all of our efforts to help young people find their footing, their calling, and their voice. And it is the legacy of that love that keeps us connected to one another across the generations – and expands our community to literally stretch across the world.

As a residential community of adults and young people, and as a vibrant alumni network of scholar-activists, we are more than a school. We are a family. And so whether our students come to us from the protective cocoon of a loving family or the chaotic swirl of an unsafe environment, our primary job is to create a campus culture in which all people feel that they have a voice, value, and visibility, and where everyone’s daily experiences are rich with ritualistic reminders of why this is the place they belong.

This foundation has always been part of who we have been at Piney Woods. It will remain central to who we become.

Excellence

Currently, Piney Woods has a campus of nearly 2,000 acres, most of which don’t factor into the daily experiences of our students.

In the future, we have a different vision – one in which the entire campus is our classroom and one where the rigor of our intellectual pursuits is augmented by the vigor of our physical exploration.

We believe as Maria Montessori did, that “the human hand allows the mind to reveal itself.”And so we envision a future in which our students’ hands are doing much more than holding a pencil, or taking notes; they are digging, testing, sculpting, building, and revealing. And we envision a campus-wide culture in which the boundary between class and campus, student and adult, and inside and outside is not on of division, but exploration.

At Piney Woods, we’re not merely students of the past. We’re also scientists of the future – and the lands will be our labs.

Integrity

To fulfill our goal of helping young people learn what it means to pursue lives of purpose, we must orient them not merely to the journey within; to a deep understanding of ones’ self, one’s passion, and one’s purpose but also to the journey without: to the world beyond these piney woods, and to the task of using one’s talents in the service of creating a more just and equitable world.

This is why everything we do here must have an eye towards justice: socially, in order to commit to ensuring equality among people: environmentally, in order to commit to protecting the needs of the natural world; and spiritually, in order to commit to honoring each person’s liberty of faith.

This, too, is what it means to educate for the head, the heart, and the hands. This, too, is what the world will come to recognize as a “Piney Woods graduate.”

Empowerment

Understanding what it means to be free is the amount the greatest riddles any of us will face in our lives. Yet rarely in school settings do we all allow and equip young people to experience freedom in any meaningful way. The schedule is packed. The bell is about to ring. The campus is largely off-limits. Equally important, however, is how rarely we ask that any freedom and responsibility, our task as adults is not merely to give young people more autonomy – although that’s a part of it. Instead, we must create a culture in which conscience is the central objective of all learning experiences.

For us, freedom cannot mean merely granting young people the space to say whatever they want to say, or go wherever they want to go. For us, the task is ensuring that our graduates have the space to consider, “Of all the things I can say and do, what must I say? What must I do?” This is the primary journey our school must provide for its students: the journey within.

This is what we are intentionally designed to make room for. This is the indelible mark of a successful Piney Woods graduate.