By Amy Schrei, Director of Communications and Marketing
At the fall Board of Trustees meeting, four students gave tributes to teachers who positively impacted them.
Joseph Cooke ’24 paid tribute to English teacher Lindsay Coleman; Alex Rice ’25 acknowledged Spanish teacher Natalie Moravek; Macy Shi ’26 spoke about Spanish teacher Miriam Pallant; and Justin Solacoff ’24 shared his bond with technology teacher Charles Sharon.
CULTURE OF DISCOVERY
Tower Hill is built on a culture of discovery. It is here that our students and teachers are planted in a fertile soil. They thrive through scholarship and human connections, which provide the essential elements for growth. Everyone at Tower Hill is given the opportunity to bloom and flourish. Students receive support from their teachers, advisors, deans and coaches, while faculty in turn receive support from one another, Division Heads, administrators and the Head of School.
Alex Rice ’25 made a meaningful tribute to Lower School Spanish teacher Natalie Moravek reflecting the profound impact educators have on students’ lives here at Tower Hill. Moravek’s ability to ignite Rice’s love for Spanish in Lower School not only endured throughout her years at Tower Hill, but also inspired her to pursue a minor in Spanish in college.
Joseph Cooke ’24 spoke about his growth as a student and poet under English teacher Lindsay Coleman and expressed gratitude for her tendency to push him outside of his comfort zone and grow accustomed to expressing his own thoughts and feelings. Coleman’s support and reassurance gave Cooke the confidence to author a poem that won a prestigious Gold Key Scholastic Writing Award.
For Macy Shi ’26, Upper School Spanish teacher Miriam Pallant inspired her to pay it forward. “Ms. Pallant has been a huge role model to me,” recalled Shi. “[She] has contributed immensely to my enjoyment of learning languages and sparked my love for education. [Because of her,] I want to be an educator that positively impacts students and a citizen that inspires others.”
MEANINGFUL CONNECTIONS
The Tower Hill community runs on meaningful connections. They are the conduit for optimal learning and lay the foundation for scholarly development. Relationships built between teachers and students allow for symbiotic learning and growth. Likewise, connections are formed within the schoolhouse, amongst faculty and with the community, that propel our collective understanding of scholarship and how we meet the individual needs of our students. In their Board presentations, the four students and their teachers often described their relationships using similar language—connection, inspiration, support, challenge, flexibility, exploration, caring, discovery.
“I am truly grateful for the knowledge, feedback and inspiration you’ve bestowed on me.” Cooke remarked about Coleman. In turn, Coleman said, “There are times where we don’t even realize how much of an impact we are having on one another, because we are so busy in this process of learning a subject or a skill. But when we are lucky enough to have someone verbalize that impact, it can be life changing.”
Coleman felt an overwhelming sense of joy in watching Cooke expand out of his comfort zone. “What I admire so much about Joseph is the way in which he engaged in my class with an open mind and an open heart,” Coleman shared. “He had the courage and the creativity to try something he hadn’t previously tried before, and to put his whole heart into that effort. It can be very intimidating to do this in any capacity and in any pursuit, but Joseph showed himself and others what it truly means to be brave.”
Technology teacher Charles Sharon said the “connections with students” are what impacts him the most, and he feels that his “fellow teachers and staff are part of my family.”
Justin Solacoff ’24 said, “Mr. Sharon truly changed my Tower Hill experience. He fostered my love of school and thirst for knowledge. He gave me a reason to show up to school each day with a positive attitude.” Solacoff has worked for Sharon as a camp counselor for the past two summers, showing the lasting connection that teachers and students form at Tower Hill across all three divisions.
Of course, connections extend far beyond the classroom through relationships with coaches, advisers and extra curricular activities. Moravek, for example, values her role as a coach because she is able to develop personal connections with students on a non-academic level. Moravek taught Rice Spanish in Lower School, and now coaches her in track, giving their friendship the opportunity to grow in a holistic way.
GROWTH MINDSET
Personal and professional growth are hallmarks of Moravek’s 16-year tenure at Tower Hill. The flexibility and support she has received from the administration and fellow teachers allowed her to create the Lower School Spanish program, and she has had the freedom to develop, grow, refine and improve the curriculum.
Moravek believes, “it is important to have a growth mindset,” which she will put to use in the 2024-2025 school year in a new role teaching Middle School Spanish. Tower Hill’s exceptional environment has given Moravek the confidence to try something new, learn from others and ask for help. She looks forward to growing and learning by teaching a different age group and finding ways to best transition students from Lower to Middle School.
Sharon has also utilized Tower Hill’s fertile ground to expand his career. He has taught prekindergarten, kindergarten, Lower and Middle School technology, and he has coached varsity and Middle School soccer, as well as indoor and outdoor track, basketball, lacrosse and tennis. He’s taught multiple siblings, gotten to know families and made a “lasting impact on countless students,” as Solacoff noted.
ENGAGING SCHOLARSHIP
A variety of creative teaching styles provide inspiration for learning and make lessons engaging.
“If I’m not having fun or intrigued by the conversation or the lesson, I can only imagine the students aren’t very interested,” says Sharon.
Moravek makes class interesting by incorporating physical movement and games into her curriculum and utilizing real world items to reinforce vocabulary. Rice recalled a specific instance when Moravek had the students use their language skills to act out a fairy tale entirely in Spanish, which has become an annual tradition.
Engaging in real-world scholarship is what Tower Hill’s summer, two-week Global Studies trip to Uruguay is all about. Pallant, who is leading the trip, said she is looking forward to “watching students realize how much they can do.”
The trip to Uruguay is the culmination of a Learning for Life grant Pallant received to further develop her higher-level linguistic skills. She took a course run by The Ohio State University housed at Academia Uruguay, a language school for all ages based in Montevideo.
“Selfishly, I have a better understanding of something once I think about how to share it with my students,” explains Pallant. “It’s the best way for me to learn.”
Both Shi and Rice will be traveling with Pallant to Uruguay this summer, a testament to the sustaining influence of Tower Hill, which encourages students to apply language skills in real world contexts. The students will study at Academia Uruguay (the same school where Pallant studied), and they all have agreed to only speak in Spanish during the whole trip.
“Applying for this trip was just one way for me to show my appreciation for all the years Ms. Moravek spent teaching me the basics of the Spanish language,” Rice explained in her tribute. “Because of her, I understand the benefits of engaging in communities all over the world.”
While these stories are certainly special and heartwarming, they happen everyday at Tower Hill. At the Board Meeting, the touching words from both the students and teachers left several people with tears in their eyes.
