By LINDA CHION KENNEY
Back at the high school in the district she earned her degree, Acadia Bravo is living the dream she fashioned for herself as a gutsy freshman, as a high school chorus teacher at Riverview High.
“The fire was lit under me in middle school,” Bravo said, about the mentor she had in Gilbert Lopez, then the music teacher at Rodgers Middle School. “He was extremely sympathetic and compassionate. He provided for me a safe place and a home.
That’s our goal as music teachers, and Mr. Lopez did that for me.”
In her first year as a teacher and choral director at Riverview High, Bravo works with another mentor in her life, Elizabeth “Liz” Stewart, whose many duties include teaching and directing many choral groups, as well as musical theater.
“Acadia came to me as a high school freshman and said she knew what she wanted to be,” Stewart said. “She said, ‘I want to be a choir director. I want to build my resume here at Riverview High.’ ”
Acadia Bravo, with her mentor, former teacher and now colleague, Elizabeth “Liz” Stewart
With All-State, All-County and master musician designations, as well as her participation in solo and ensemble groups and private voice lessons, Bravo “did everything she needed to do to prepare for the career she has now,” Stewart said.
Stewart also has found her dream job at Riverview High, where next year she is set to celebrate her 20th year, having been drawn to the school by Daron Hawkins, the much-beloved musical theater teacher, who graduated from East Bay High. The street outside the school’s theater is named for Hawkins posthumously.
Stewart said she was working on a community theater production of Grease, when she learned that Durant High, where the musical was to be performed, no longer was available. Hawkins at Riverview arranged for the production to be staged there.
“He loved what he saw in the show and decided to be my technical director, and that’s when the magic started,” Stewart said. “That’s when Daron and I started working together.”
As fate would have it, Stewart is set to stage Grease in the spring, with Riverview High band, orchestra, musical theater and choral students. What she found in Hawkins, what she found in herself, what she sees in Bravo is the stuff from which dreams are both made and realized.
“Being a music educator, it’s what we were called to do,” said Stewart, who started out as a private voice teacher and now, with a master’s degree in music education from the University of Florida, is working on her doctorate in music education from Liberty University. “I believe everybody has specific gifts and talents that are gifted by God. I feel that with my role as a teacher, that’s the best way I can serve my community and to inspire kids to realize their potential through music.”
Case in point, Bravo, whose pre-college resume was chock-full of accomplishments, including having been the first freshman at Riverview High to earn master musician, All-County and All-State designations. “It was a lot of hard work, but it certainly paid off,” Bravo said. “And I was able to do it all of my years at Riverview.”
Liz Stewart Photos
Riverview High graduate Acadia Bravo, at the piano, with students in one of her music education classes at Riverview High
With her first year of teaching at Kathleen High School in Lakeland under her belt, the job opened at Riverview. Bravo said she got the hiring call from principal Brian Spiro, who, during Bravo’s junior and senior year, was Riverview’s assistant principal for curriculum. Spiro, too, is a Riverview High graduate, which makes it even more poignant the words he used when in a phone call he offered the job to Bravo.
“He said, ‘How would you like to come home?’ ” Bravo said. “And I said I would absolutely love that. And it truly is that. Riverview High has always been my home.”
As for the kids she loves to teach, they would include kids with special needs, for whom Bravo has a special gift, Stewart said.
“Some are completely wheelchair-bound,” Bravo said. “Some are on the high-functioning autism spectrum. Some are non-verbal. They don’t speak at all. My goal is to provide for all students a place, a home, where they’re all able to express themselves through music.”