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Hill School’s Team and TEEN Saturday Make a Powerful Difference

Hill School’s Team and TEEN Saturday Make a Powerful Difference

By Leonard Shapiro

Maria Arellano was the first in her family to graduate from college two years ago, and she’s now a legal assistant in a Washington law firm still thinking about applying to law school. She also knows that because of a program at The Hill School she joined while still a third grader in a local public school, none of the above would have been possible.

That program, Team Saturday and a few years later, TEEN Saturday, were started twenty-one years ago under the direction of educators Ann Northrup and her husband Tom, who back then was Hill’s Headmaster and now oversees its development program. The programs were intended to attract youngsters, mostly from families in the school’s western Loudoun footprint who were not enrolled at Hill but might benefit from using its classrooms and playing fields to enrich their lives.

“When we started out, we needed to know what we could accomplish in four hours every other Saturday,” said Ann Northrup, who has run the program from day one. “We realized the children had to want to come and that we had to have something they would want to do. It’s Saturday. Can we give them something they would enjoy and mean something in their lives?

“It was not going to be tutorial, in the classroom. We wanted to provide a safe and respectful place for a child to come and be together with other children, to provide enriching opportunities, and lots of individual attention.  To do that, it needed to be top-heavy with adults. And we also wanted to have our Hill eighth-graders involved as mentors.”

All of that has happened, frequently with grand results.

Maria Arellano can attest to that. Her family lives in a tenant house on a Middleburg farm, where her father is employed as farm manager. Ann Northrup, who visits with every family before their children come into the program, still remembers meeting a little girl named Maria who was in third grade at Banneker Elementary School but was reading a sixth-grade level book.

“Maria and her brother joined the program,” Ann said. “I remember her father saying to me ‘there’s nothing more important to me than my children’s education.’ If they were doing schoolwork, they were excused from doing housework.”

Maria did so well in the Team Saturday program, she eventually earned a scholarship to Hill for grades 6-8. That was followed by a scholarship to Notre Dame Academy (now Middleburg Academy) followed by a college scholarship to William & Mary. And now, every other Saturday, Maria makes the drive out from where she lives in Tysons Corner to Hill School to work with the current children in the program.

One recent Saturday, she was teaching cooking and making cookies for lunch for the group. She also spoke animatedly about 

her own experience in the program.

“I could do things I couldn’t do at my own school,” she recalled. “I enjoyed art. I remember doing cooking and now I teach cooking. I remember taking Tae Kwon Do and even breaking a board with a kick. I was so shy in my own school and it was so nice to be at a school that was such a change of scenery. There was such a community atmosphere here, and that was wonderful.”

These days, Team Saturday includes 22 children from second through fifth grades. TEEN Saturday has 26 enrolled, from sixth through 12th grade. Most youngsters are recommended to the program by a school guidance counselor. Many children get to the program via Hill School buses, which run four routes in western Loudoun.

In the beginning, instructors volunteered. But thanks to an original endowmentprovided by a benefactor who 

wanted to provide some sort of outreach program, teachers and drivers were then paid for their good work. And Hill eighth grade volunteers remain a critical part of the equation.

 “We are extremely fortunate to have the continued support of the Hill Board of Trustees and the school Headmasters, “ Ann added.

The program runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.and children are divided into three or four groups. They all meet at the start of the day before going off to their activities—which varies from art to cooking, Tae Kwon Do, basketball, soccer,  rope- and wall-climbing, even the cotillion dance lessons (donated by Gail Wofford and the Williams Cotillion)—and all meet again for lunch. At the end of the day,  Team and TEEN children gather for a lively game of kickball, before going back inside in separate groups to talk about their day, or anything else on their minds.

Occasionally, they’ll leave campus, as well. John and Julie Coles often host the group at their farm for riding lessons.  And Tony Horkan annually brings a day of learning self-defense from hisBlue Ridge Tae Kwon Do Academy. 

Joan Gardiner, a gifted artist and potter from Unison, has been teaching art in the program for many years and oversees a popular annual kite-making project.  The children build and then enter their kites in the Smithsonian Kite Festival in the shadow of the Washington Monument, and they consistently win or place in the top three.

 “Ann (Northrup) is just an irresistible force,” Gardiner said.  The kids have a place where they feel like they have kindred spirits all around them.  Each year has a different dynamic, but they all manage to find people they can be themselves with. And 

they have adult friends, too.”

“We have only one rule,” Ann Northrup said. “Treat other people the way you’d like to be treated yourself.  It’s also a wonderful experience for our Hill eighth graders. They’re required to come at least three times a year and some of them are here every session. We’ve had children in the program who are having a rough time, and our eighth graders will just attach themselves to that child. They have to step up to the plate in ways that are a little different for them.”

Over the years, those Hill eighth graders have been asked to write a few paragraphs in class about their experiences. Many of their observations are particularly poignant, and telling, as well.

“Before I went, I thought Team Saturday was a waste of time,” one student said. “I just wanted to get it over with so I can have my Saturdays back. I was wrong. It was one of the best experiences of my life. When you go into the library the first time, it’s like you’re the main event. All the kids want to be around you. And knowing that they are looking up to me inspires me to do good things, to set a good example.”

Wrote another Hill student, “I didn’t want to wake up early and control a bunch of kids. But when I got home at 2:30 each time, I always felt good about myself and what I had done. I didn’t feel worn out or grumpy, like I expected, but happy and fulfilled. The most important lesson I learned was to be kind! Even when it’s the hardest, that’s when being kind is most important. I know now that I helped make a difference in those kids’ lives, and that they made a difference in mine.”

Ann Northrup has stacks of those remarkable comments she’s collected for more than 20 years. For Team and TEEN Saturday, it’s clearly been mission accomplished, with so much more to come.

“I loved the program,” said Maria Arellano, one of countless Team Saturday success stories. “It kept me so grounded then, and even now that I am older, I couldn’t wait to get back. That hasn’t changed.” 

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