Extraordinary Educators - Seven Hills School

We owe to the
teachers we
recognize today an
incalculable debt of
gratitude. We owe
it to our students,
present and future,
to do all we can do
to sustain the legacy
of excellence they
leave behind.
our own iconic teachers begin to retire, Seven Hills will be
competing with schools across the nation in a dwindling pool
of teaching talent. Though the present economic downturn has
ameliorated the situation somewhat, the larger demographic
picture is irrefutable.
To maintain the strength of our faculty, Seven Hills must be
in a position to compete aggressively with peer schools in our
region, and we must maintain salaries that are comparable to
those offered at the local public schools. Thanks to the recent
success of our current Critical Assets campaign, over the last
four years, we have added nearly $10 million to the school’s
endowment, bringing us closer to that goal. No effort is more
critical to ensuring the continuing excellence of this school.
A Culture of Continuous Improvement
As we seek to maintain the strength of our faculty, it will not
be enough merely to hire the best teachers available; we will
also want to maintain a rich culture of continuous improvement,
the atmosphere in which talented teachers can thrive.
The best schools, schools like Seven Hills, provide a warm,
collegial atmosphere that promotes creativity and innovation.
They empower teachers to take risks and to experiment with
4
fresh approaches. They provide the resources for professional
research, personal growth and reflection. They facilitate collaboration
and teamwork and mutual respect. They set and
maintain the very highest standards of professional conduct.
The last decade has wrought a revolution in education. In
an era when virtually all human knowledge is available at the
touch of a button, the nation’s leading schools have begun to
de-emphasize mere knowledge acquisition in favor of a new
emphasis on the application of 21st century skills: critical
thinking, creative problem solving, global awareness and cultural
sensitivity, and communicative and collaborative skills.
In this context, it will be equally important to ensure that all of
our teachers are growing professionally. We need to provide the
time and the resources for our teachers to read voraciously, to
attend workshops, and to visit other premier schools. We must
provide the resources for teachers to innovate, to research best
practices, and to rethink their courses to prepare students fully
for a rapidly changing world.
This spring a generous grant from an educational foundation
funded a host of curriculum development grants. Teachers
were offered the opportunity to apply for a summer grant to
develop an ambitious interdisciplinary unit which would engage
students in utilizing instructional technology to research
global issues of political, economic, or environmental concern.
Astonishingly, in this, just the first year of the program, more
than 30 teachers submitted proposals, virtually all of which
were funded. These new curriculum projects are designed to
foster students’ critical reasoning and problem solving skills and
to hone their ability to work collaboratively, both with their
classmates and, via telecommunications link, with students from
diverse cultural backgrounds.
At the same time, the faculty as a whole has undertaken a
summer reading program (much like that for students!), reading
and sharing observations from a host of recent publications on
innovative, research-based teaching practices designed to prepare
students, even more fully, for the challenges of the global
economy. It is our hope to endow these and several other professional
development programs to ensure that the Seven Hills
faculty remains on the leading edge of educational innovation.
We owe to the teachers we recognize today an incalculable
debt of gratitude. We owe it to our students, present and future,
to do all we can do to sustain the legacy of excellence they
leave behind.