On behalf of the students, teachers, and staff who call The Hill School their home, please accept my warmest welcome. As I am just settling in to my first year as headmaster, it was not that long ago when I too began exploring The Hill through this very website, other online resources, conversations with friends and colleagues who knew the School, and visits to campus. The more I learned, the more I fell in love with The Hill, its people, its history, and its values. If you are just beginning your exploration of The Hill, I suspect, and hope, that you will have a similar experience. For those of you who already know Hill well, I invite you to fall in love all over again!
When you visit The Hill, you might note that we still are a bit traditional. For example, we follow a
dress code, our students regularly sit down with faculty members for
family-style meals, we gather twice a week at
Chapel for thoughtful reflection, many of our students study Latin and Greek, and we pride ourselves on a strict student-written
honor code and demanding code of conduct. At times, these traditions and standards challenge our students and their parents, stimulate our faculty, and spark nostalgic, impassioned conversations among our alumni. However, and without question, The Hill School rewards those who embrace and accept this rigorous environment with an exceptional
educational experience and an extraordinary sense of community, place, purpose, and family. If this balance of rigor and reward appeals to you, I invite you to explore our website, ask difficult questions, get to know our talented faculty, visit our
breathtaking campus, and picture yourself as a member of The Hill community.
This is an interesting and exciting time for The Hill School. We are implementing a new Strategic Plan that will guide us to become “the preeminent family boarding school in the nation.” To accomplish that goal, we are embarking on a comprehensive review and re-envisioning of our entire academic and co-curricular program. Moreover, we are turning to The Hill family to help us enhance our campus, to employ the best possible faculty and staff, to ensure that a Hill education is affordable to every student, and to strengthen the important relationship with and service learning opportunities afforded by our
local community of Pottstown.
This also is an interesting and exciting time in the development of secondary education. We know more about adolescence, neuroscience, and human behavior than ever before. We are grappling with rapidly changing educational technologies that allow our students to access, synthesize, and manipulate knowledge in new ways: quickly, collaboratively, and creatively. Over the coming years, students at The Hill School will experience new styles of learning, discover new sources of knowledge, and enjoy new forms of expression.
Perhaps you have heard the somewhat ambiguous blessing, "May you live in interesting times." For those of us living and learning at The Hill right now, that blessing illustrates the opportunities we enjoy and the challenges we face every day.
Please come see for yourself.
Warm regards,