Flowers 2Teacher Appreciation is a special day at Hill School. Parents and students celebrate our faculty and staff with wonderful traditions that demonstrate how much we value their commitment and dedication to Hill’s philosophy and mission. It’s a really fun day on campus!

Students arrive early with a wonderful variety of flowers – some plucked from the garden that morning – and deliver them to waiting parent volunteers who assemble the loose flowers into stunning arrangements for every Hill School faculty and staff member. We filled 63 vases this year! The bouquets receive gift tags and are placed inside the Sheila Johnson Performing Art Center lobby for the whole school to admire as we come together for an all-school Flowers 1assembly in honor of our teachers and staff. We also draw names for teacher prizes, which are sponsored by proceeds from our annual auction. And while we are doing all of this, another group of parents is preparing a delicious lunch for our teachers to enjoy!

This year, the PTC is working with students and parents on a project to “Fill A Teacher’s Bucket,” which was inspired by the books by Tom Rath, including “How Full is Your Bucket for Kids.” Lower school teachers plan lessons around the big idea in this book. It’s that we all have invisible buckets to carry our good feelings about ourselves. We feel great when our buckets are full and sad when they are empty. We can fill our own bucket when we fill someone else’s bucket.

The PTC is asking students to write down ways a teacher has “filled their bucket” and to put their cards into the giant red bucket by the front desk during the month of May. Parents can do this, too! These comments will be collected and turned into a book of gratitude for Hill faculty.

Watch a short video that celebrates our teachers and what they do for the Hill School community!