A Letter from Principal Newton!

Dear Hill Families,

Welcome back to school!  We hope that your family had a relaxing, fun filled time over the Winter Break.  To get to see snow twice in one month in Austin was pretty special!  We have really enjoyed hearing the students’ stories about their holiday adventures!  Now, here we are in 2018, setting resolutions and goals for learning and social, emotional choices this Spring Semester at Hill School.

On January 2, the Hill Staff participated in the Creative Learning Initiative Training with the other elementary schools in the Anderson Vertical Team.  On this day, staff collaborated with community arts partners on strategies to create engaging, arts-integrated lessons in the classroom.  The CLI has been a wonderful way for our teachers to expose students to multiple art forms, thereby deepening content understanding.

On January 3, all of the schools in the Anderson Vertical Team joined together for  multiple training sessions led by teachers and staff on everything from technology integration to mindfulness.  Teachers learned about math and writing instruction, ways to integrate spelling into the curriculum, how flexible seating can benefit students and how to differentiate instruction for multiple learners.  Then in the afternoon, teachers across campuses met for vertical and horizontal planning.  This is always a great day for conversations and planning across the entire Anderson Vertical Team!  Thank you for giving us this day for teacher planning and development with our peers!

Finally, I wanted to let everyone know that Whitney Wallace, Hill fourth grade teacher has resigned from AISD for personal reasons, effective January 12, 2018.  We appreciate Ms. Wallace’s service to the students of Hill School and wish her luck in future endeavors.  We have hired Alexa Denny as our new fourth grade teacher.  Ms. Denny is a graduate of the University of Texas and most recently was a fourth grade student teacher at Laurel Mountain Elementary School in Round Rock ISD.  We are excited to welcome Alexa Denny to Hill School!

Have a great weekend and we will see you in the Hill hallways!

BN