Hill School incorporates a number of special programs that express the school’s core principles:
Mentoring
Upper school students in Grades 6-8 are paired with a lower school student (grades K-3). Under the guidance of teacher teams, student pairs meet weekly to engage in a variety of activities throughout the year, as well as during special school events such as the Thanksgiving Service and Cultural Study.
Friday Afternoon Program
All students participate in a variety of activities on Friday afternoons that include field trips, outdoor education, curricular activities, and community service.
Culture Study
For three days before Spring Break, the entire school participates in the study of another culture. Students will study a specific country – its geography, history, language, art, people, customs – through a scientific ecomystery, song and dance presentations, art projects, hands on learning, and a cultural feast.
Place-Based Education
Faculty at Hill School are committed to fostering responsible stewardship and using the outdoor campus as an educational resource. The Dornin Science Center program, which often occurs on Friday afternoons is a mainstay of place-based education at Hill School.
Team and Teen Saturday
Team and Teen Saturday provides a series of activities for children in other schools who have been identified by their school counselors. All Hill School 8th graders participate as junior faculty in Team Saturday on at least three Saturdays during the school year. For more information regarding this program visit the Team and Teen Saturday web page.
Parent Partnership
All parents, teachers, staff, and administrators are invited to attend a Welcome Back Breakfast on the first day of school, opening of school dinners hosted by local families as well as a fall evening Back to School night hosted by the Parent Teacher Club. Throughout the year, teachers and administrators offer Head of School Coffees, Education and School Life Forums, and Parent-Peer meetings to share thoughts and experiences on a particular topic.
Community Service
Each class participates in at least one community service project during the school year. Addtional all school service projects are held as well.
Calliope
Under the guidance of editor-in-chief Lucy Turner, upper school students, along with English faculty Jill Beifuss and Hunt Lyman, read submissions and make selections to create two issues of Calliope magazine each year. A few fourth and fifth graders serve on Calliope’s editorial board by invitation of the editor-in-chief, and sixth through eighth graders serve on a voluntary basis. Editors typically attend two or three after-school meetings at which they read between seventy-five and a hundred fifty anonymous submissions of poetry, short fiction, or personal narrative compositions written by students from junior kindergarten through eighth grade. Through a process that includes private vote-casting and group discussion, Calliope student editors shape each new issue of a magazine that has been in continuous publication at the Hill School since 1982, when it was founded by faculty emeritus Tal Mack and named after the Greek muse of epic poetry.