Farewell, Hill Middle School Community

I arrived home very late Tuesday night after an excruciatingly long school board meeting. I was too wired to go to sleep, so I finished a book I was reading called The Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg. This is a passage I came upon that struck me deeply:

There is a story about a Navajo grandfather who once told his grandson, "Two wolves live inside me. One is the bad wolf, full of greed and laziness, full of anger and jealousy and regret. The other is a good wolf, full of joy and compassion and willingness and a great love of the world. All the time, these wolves are fighting inside me." "But grandfather," the boy said, "Which wolf will win?" The grandfather answered, "The one I feed."

Hill Middle School is closing on June 15, and although there are more than enough morsels within that closing to keep the bad wolf fat, I choose to feed the good wolf today.

By virtue of our location in town, my children have been blessed to attend Hill Middle School. They have been nurtured there from the moment they entered sixth grade, first by the marvelous teachers and staffers and, then, with the arrival of the dynamo who is Chona Killeen beginning with the 2009/10 school year, by an amazing, caring, high-spirited, phenomenal principal. Doing the minimum has never been her style nor has it been the style of the committed teachers.

Time and again, the Hill staffers have pulled off amazing feats, on their own and with support of parents.

In science, teacher Gina Schilling has pulled off the coup of not only the Mathematics Engineering Science Achievement program in partnership with Dominican University but also a never-to-be-matched Family Science Night in partnership with the Northern California American Chemical Society. Former science teacher Nicole Calmels somehow rooked parent Dirt Diva Annie Spiegelman into helping students create an organic garden. And Annie's kid wasn't even in Nicole's class! Teachers and Annie have nurtured the students just as they, in turn, have nurtured the garden.

Core teachers put on amazing History Nights and Poetry Nights and other showcases, with students standing before packed houses reading their original, sometimes hilarious and sometimes painfully poignant, poetry; portraying historical characters in a wax museum setting; providing overviews of the history of the world. These teachers engage my kids and so many others with such innovative assignments which most surely go beyond the rather staid standards so often recited elsewhere in a style bringing Ben Stein to mind. It is because of them that our students are county and state — and even national — finalists in spelling and geography bees and PTA Reflections and Elks writing competitions.

Without math department head Stefanie Coe and other math teachers, there would be no advanced math classes that has my seventh-grade daughter and 30 classmates taking algebra now and geometry in eighth grade. Math teacher Kim Duncan gives her time and energy to bring out the best in her student Mathletes.

PE teacher Peter Urmini arrives early each day to check the track and make sure everything is in order for students. He stays late coaching a track team whose members can run circles around others. All of the P. instructors find ways to engage and encourage and cajole Hill kids to get up and get moving.

Without the classified staff, the school would not run. It is a tight-knit and cohesive group of people who perform as one, all with the single-minded goal of achievement for all. No child is left behind at Hill.

And then there is the music. Ah, the blessed music! Not only winter and spring concerts. No, not just those. Music nights and pasta feeds to fill our bellies and our spirits. Competitions up and down the state. Creating CDs — real studio-produced CDs — with the help of parents such as Amy Wigton. And the musical theatre production of "Annie" this spring, brought to life with major assistance from parents Pat and Marina Nims. None of which could have possibly happened without the dedication and talent and love displayed for years and years by music teacher Allison McIvor.

(Don't worry! Remember? I'm only feeding the good wolf today.)

Without the support of the PTA, led most recently and so phenomenally by President Azella Metzger and Vice President Lisa Barnes, as well as music boosters, and all the parents counting themselves as members in the true sense of the word, Hill would not be what it is. Parents who chose not to leave the school when we had the chance because we knew — we know — what a community we have helped create for and with our children.

You are Hill Middle School. And I thank you for giving my children your love and attention and dedication and commitment. And I thank you for feeding the good wolf within me. Go Husky Pride!