Happy New Year! We are all back, though you won’t have seen me in person this week. I’m quarantined with COVID (my first time having it!), but am very much working on school projects. The staff had a great In-Service day meeting on Monday, including a lively discussion about “choice” in the Montessori classroom. We...Read More

Dear HIlltop Families, After years of carefully expanding staffing and services, and broadening our support of equity and economic diversity through Indexed Tuition, we find ourselves needing to focus on financial sustainability – and specifically, to plan for some belt tightening around all of our programs for next year. The vast government grants and tax...Read More

Maria Montessori emphasized the importance of “The Spiritual Preparation of the Teacher” as critical to supporting children into developing into their true selves. She said that a teacher must notice and accept their faults and “must be willing to accept guidance if we wish to become effective teachers”. She speaks against being defensive about shortcomings,...Read More

One of Montessori’s foundational principles is that all children should be treated with dignity and respect and that their internal drive to “work” should be valued over training them to want external rewards. As Montessorians, we get excited when psychologists and researchers prove her theories to be true and further enlighten us as to why...Read More

We are launching our 50th anniversary today! We look forward to celebrating this evening at our annual family picnic over good food, conversation, and music. Our gift to our students and faculty to commemorate our history are retro-designed t-shirts that harken back to our former rabbit logo as well as the ring tees of the...Read More

Dear Hilltop Families, Just today Dan French and Mark Levine issued a memorandum regarding COVID 19 considerations for the coming school year. The plans that we have had in place are in compliance with these considerations. We have been proud of the careful navigation we have done through this pandemic and grateful for the understanding and cooperation from our...Read More

Dear Hilltop Community, I want to acknowledge that school safety is on many of our minds currently. I know we all feel heartbroken and devastated over the recent tragedy in Texas, and it is easy to feel frightened and alarmed by what we’ve seen in the news. As some of you might know, the school...Read More

In conjunction with the anticipated new state guidelines mentioned in this memo, I’ve been meeting with the HMS COVID Advisory Committee to develop a plan for our school as masking becomes optional in our state. While we have been told that the guidance would be out earlier this week and would go into effect on March 14, as...Read More

Former board member Rich Wolfe died suddenly on February 12th of heart complications. Administrators, teachers, alum, and past and present Board members have been devastated by the shocking news of this loss. He was a proud parent to Middle Student Greta/Grex and served on the Board for four years, including in the roles of Treasurer,...Read More

In honor of Jessica Thomas, who dedicated her life’s work as Hilltop’s Lower Elementary Teacher, and passed away last week after a yearlong illness with cancer.  Jessica Thomas grew up in London, England and in the 1980’s moved to Vermont with her son, Jed, who joined Hilltop at age three, and thus was her beginning...Read More